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The Best Internet Business

What Is The Best Internet Business?

There are several Web Host giants on the internet that provide private label rebranding to small business owners. This might be the best opportunity to “piggyback” on well-established businesses if you are just starting out in internet marketing. This gateway for unlimited wealth is made possible due to the growing demand of digital marketing in regions that are outside the scope of these large corporations.

In order to gain a share of the market, these corporate web companies offer reseller plans to small businesses which take their products and services, rebrand them and sell to business owners at a profit. These products include domain name services, web hosting, online storage, business productivity software, and tools.

There is quite an advantage in being a small business retailer because one is able to customize their business at the local level and meet the demands of their growing market on the World Wide Web. Let’s look at the definition of digital marketing to understand why the demand has grown significantly over the past decades.

What Is a Digital Marketing In Relation To Web Hosting?

Digital Marketing involves all functions that are geared toward promoting online business activities. This includes but is not restricted to products and services in subcategories such as Domain Name registration, web hosting, email marketing, web design and development, software applications, sales and marketing, social media marketing and consultation, and all medium through which businesses and individuals advertise and market their products online.

Online Retail Marketing

Online Retail Marketing refers to activities geared toward end users of a web-based business solution such as domain names registration, web design services, software apps for business and personal use, social media management, web hosting and other activities that promote online communication.

As the need for business solutions intensifies, business persons become increasingly concerned about meeting the demands of the online industry, and therefore the Pros and Cons of the internet business become relevant.

The Cons

One would think that the more customers you have, is the more profits you are likely to acquire but the truth be told, the more the business will become more challenged due to competitors, need for online bandwidth, web creativity, uniqueness, and need for customer service due to increase in customer queries and the need for technical support.

The Pros

Fortunately, some web hosting reseller business plan come with independent customer service team that manages concerns and queries of clients on their behalf. Another positive thing about being a domain reseller is the handling of payments and processing of sales. As a web hosting reseller, you are given the opportunity to re-price your products to earn commissions from your own business.

Another pro for being a reseller is the fact that starting your digital marketing business does not require an exorbitant startup cost nor high overhead expenses to operate effectively, nor initial products, compared to other online ventures. Products are sold through the distributors but your private label is displayed discreetly in the sales operation and therefore your business receives the credit!

How Do I Become A Web Hosting Reseller?

There are two ways to become a Web Hosting Reseller and Domain Name Registrar. One can sign up as an affiliate or an actual reseller.

An affiliate gets a commission from advertising online products that the Web company (suppliers) market, using links and codes on approved websites.

Reseller uses their own brand to market the Web Company’s products (supplier) and services at a higher rate of returns. End users see the reseller’s products and services as their company’s brand and not the Web Company’s image.

Affiliates display the name of the wholesaler or provider (Web Company) through banner advertisements and other forms of internet marketing, similar to a franchising arrangement.

How Much Does It Cost To Run A Web Hosting and Domain Name Business?

It is very alarming to find out the actual cost of starting your own internet business. The subscription for a reseller license varies from $89-$499 annually and it depends on the provider or web company. Most persons prefer to do business with Web companies that offer a variety of affordable products and services. Once a business plan is purchased, one can start selling immediately online.

Some Web companies provide a retail storefront with the domain name search field. Other features include the following:

Dedicated customer service team support for your clients
Marketing software to assist in promoting their brand online. Resellers are expected to purchase their domain name to start promoting their retail internet business.

Start Up Cost

There is no mandatory startup cost for a Web Hosting Business, however, it is suggested to start with at least $300-$500. This would include the cost of the subscription plan, a domain name for your business idea, a web designer to customize the storefront (optional), business cards and other marketing paraphernalia to help provide greater access to your target market.

There is reseller’s support, community pages, manuals and online support to help you succeed in making your business profitable.

The process of starting an internet business is simple, and while there could be challenges in securing a viable market in your region, there are no geographical restrictions. Savvy business operators stand a greater chance to earn real attractive residual income annually, in a relatively short time.

What To Expect as a Web Hosting Reseller

Business owners are able to tap into the tremendous wealth of the digital marketing business industry as it is one that never sleeps! It has often been said that you can earn money while you sleep, and since the internet generates over a billion dollars per day, more and more persons have experienced this reality. Currently, there are Web Hosting Resellers who are making $10-30K (USD) per month.

Once you are patient, open to exploring online business opportunities, and enthusiastic about providing internet business solutions for individuals and companies, then you are ready to build your digital empire.

After reading this article, if you are asked: “what is the best internet business?” I am quite sure that you are in a better position to give a logical answer. However, you must realize that no matter how skilled one is, or how many customers he or she has garnered to do business with, real success comes through smart teamwork. The late Steve Jobs once quoted; “Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”

Best Online Business Ideas For Internet Business Startups

During economy downturn, many Americans have been retrenched and it is really a challenging task for them to get back to the job market within a short period of time. Please do not feel depressed if you are one of the victims. Instead of looking for a new job, why don’t you make some changes for yourself?

There are many opportunities in the market which you can grab. One of them is the internet business.

How can you make a living from this? Let me share with you the best online business ideas which you can apply:

Tip No.1: Find out your interests

Determining your interest is the most important step before you start any online business. When you have great interest in certain area, you will be more motivated to move forward. At the same time, you need to ask yourself honestly about your own strengths. It will be better if you have certain skills in specific areas which can be your “niche” in the future.

Tip No. 2: Do research

Doing sufficient “homework” is essential before you get yourself fully involved in the online business. No matter what products or services you wish to provide, you need to make sure that there is customer demand in the market. You will face more risks in managing your new business if you don’t put in your effort in doing market research. You must know who your potential buyers are and at the same time, you should also know competitors too.

Tip No.3: Create a business plan

Developing a proper business plan enables you to know your investment cost better. Choosing a perfect name for your internet business is the priority. After that, you need to identify who your suppliers are and what promotional activities you are going to take in order to promote your products or services. You must work out your marketing strategy based on the time frame set.

Tip No. 4: Set up your own website

Since you are planning for an online business, having your own website is a must. If you are not good at building your own website, you are suggested to pay someone to develop one for you. If you really have budget constraint, you are advised to look for affiliate sites that offer you free websites.

Tip No. 5: Look for working partners

If you still don’t have full confidence on yourself to get customers, you may consider taking up a legitimate affiliate marketing program. Work with other professionals as a team so that you can gain more hands-on experience.

Last but not the least; in order to succeed in your new business, you need to have 3 important elements in yourself, i.e. passion, courage and determination. You are reminded to love your new job, face all the challenges positively and move forward with full swing. By following the above mentioned tips, I strongly believe that you can be your own boss and you can make good money from this.

Internet Marketing Ideas – How to Market Your Business Online

Marketing your business online is one of the important things that businesses can opt these days. With people now searching online for the products they want to buy, and many people are even doing their shopping online. If you want to bring your business online, you have to learn some internet marketing ideas to help you market your business.

Here are some internet marketing ideas that you may want to make use in promoting your business online.

– Create a professional looking website for your business. If you want to attract the attention of online readers and create a good impression for your potential customers, make a website that reflects professionalism. Make sure that you have well-edited website content, colors that are not too glaring but not too dull as well.

– Get yourself a good domain name. With the many heaps of websites now existing on the internet, it is important that your website can be seen easily seen by online readers. A good domain name that represents your business well can be a good marketing idea. You can buy a good domain name with minimal fee including site maintenance.

– Make your website user friendly and easy to navigate. One of the basic considerations in making a good website for your business is to make it easy and convenient for your readers.

– Create a good keyword list. Keywords are your keys to getting noticed online as well. Make sure however that you get the right keyword or key phrases that best describes your business. It is important to note that your keywords can determine your success in promoting our business online, so make sure you research on this aspect. If you opt to advertise your business on the search engines, poor choice of keywords can lose you a lot of money, so make sure you get a good list of keywords for your business.

– Optimize your website for the search engines. If you want to be seen online, one of the basic and most important internet marketing ideas that you should not forget is to make sure that your website is visible in the search engines. Add keyword-rich content, optimize your meta-tags, and advertise on the search engine results page. Google AdWords is one tool to help you promote your website to the search engine results page, but as mentioned, always make sure you have the right keywords for your online advertising.

– Advertise in other related websites. Aside from the search engines, other internet marketing ideas that may be useful in promoting your business online is to advertise online in other people’s websites that are related to yours. If your business is about sports wear and equipment, you may want to advertise your site in sports website.

– Create your business e-mail, set up auto-responders and don’t forget to add a ‘Contact Us’ form in your business website. Another important things in business is to make our customers feel that they can always count on us even after their purchase.

The Different Types Of Internet Consulting Services And Their Advantages

Internet consulting services can help businesses in many ways. Firms that offer these services employ professionals and can do anything from website design to increasing conversion rates. Other consulting services include strengthening a company’s online presence and marketing a website or products online. There are many benefits of hiring a consulting firm and taking advantage of all the consulting services they offer.

Increasing Conversion Rates

A company has a website for a variety of reasons. Most companies like to sell their products and services online so they can increase their customer base and their profits. It can be very difficult to prompt a potential customer to purchase a product on a website. Internet consulting firms offer services such as increasing conversion rates.

They have the tools and experience necessary to convert a person who is simply browsing a site into a customer. The more people who purchase products or services from a company’s website, the higher the company’s profits will be. E-commerce websites that don’t help a company succeed are only hindering it and are not worth the money, time, and effort. By using the many services provided by internet consulting firms, e-commerce websites become a worthy investment.

Strengthening a Company’s Online Presence

Businesses won’t get as much traffic to their website or customers at their stores if they have a weak online presence. It can be difficult to figure out how to create a strong online presence. Consulting firms offer services that include strengthening a company’s online presence and spreading the word about the company’s website and products online.

The consulting firm will utilize social media websites to market a business and its products, and they can create a professional business blog to help businesses connect with potential customers. By creating a blog and using social media, businesses will get the exposure they need, and traffic to their website will increase as a result.

Saving Money

Businesses that want to be successful online will have to invest in a plethora of tools and books to give them the ability and knowledge they need to help their business. Purchasing software, books, and other items can cost a lot of money, and even with all of these tools, success is not guaranteed. By using consulting services, people can spend a lot less money, and they’ll be able to hire professionals that will do a much better job.

Website Design

Another service offered by internet consulting firms is website design. Websites are a crucial part of a company’s online presence. A website that is badly designed will deter users from browsing the site and purchasing items or services. Websites need to look professional, and they need to be easy to navigate. By using an internet consultant firm’s web design services, businesses can attract more customers with an easy-to-use, professional website that is appealing.

Being More Productive

Companies that attempt to manage their website and online marketing by themselves will waste valuable time that should be spent on other important aspects of their business. By using the services offered by internet consulting firms, businesses can concentrate on other important things like the quality of their products or customer service.

Internet consulting services have many advantages and can help businesses succeed online. There are many different services available to help businesses in every way.

Internet Marketing Solutions To Promote Your Website

An Online Internet Business is expanding a lot these days. Business owners are looking for effect ways of promoting their products and services. Webmasters are now diverting towards new and effective internet marketing solutions to promote their products and services and to get online business exposure. Various internet marketing strategies are also becoming popular these days.

The main aim of internet marketing solutions is to attract more traffic to the business websites. Other is to improve the page rank through its effective means. High placement in the search engines is the other aim. When websites rankings comes high in search engines there are more chances of getting online visitors and potential customers and thus increase online queries and sales volumes. In order to achieve online marketing targets you have to face marketing competition. Also confirm before launching your internet marketing campaign what other online business and your competitors are offering in the market.

Effective internet marketing solutions helps in increasing popularity, exposure and visibility of your online business in the worldwide web. Some of popular online marketing solutions are-

Submissions to search engines – submit your website to as many search engines and directories as possible in order to get high quality visitors. List the keywords and optimize the website in popular search engines on the basis of these keywords and get the best results.

Competitor analysis – You can analyze the performance of your competitors and frame online strategies accordingly. You can use comparison tools and make efforts to rank high against your competitors. This would increase your reputation.

Affiliate marketing- In this form of marketing you can increase your sales with the help of affiliates or collaborators. This campaign helps to increase the profit and enhance visibility of your website.

Link building is the other way to get the large number of customers into your business. High link popularity means high placement in search engine queries and conversion of these queries means more business leads.

Email Marketing- Through email marketing you can inform your customers about your latest offers and services. This form of marketing proves to be very popular and effective.

Thus you can frame effective programs, campaigns and marketing strategies to generate more customers for your business. With the help of reliable internet marketing solutions you can quickly increase profits and gain god reputation for your online business.

The Role of a Webmaster in Your Internet Business

A webmaster is one of the most important person in your Internet business. This person should be one who is reliable, and can work quickly. An agile mind with efficient coding ability is what you should be looking out for.

In many circumstances, your Internet business will need changes to be made on the site fairly quickly. Therefore, it’s only reasonable to assume that your webmaster can keep up with the demand of the job. For example, you may be doing a product launch, and you desperately need the site to be up by a certain date. So your webmaster needs to get things organized – setup the graphics, setup the emails, etc. All must be completed within the time frame. Otherwise, you will get a lot of complains from angry customers.

So let’s talk a little bit about the role of the webmaster in your Internet business. What exactly is he (or she) responsible for in your Internet business? There are no standard answers for a question like this. It all depends on your agreement with your webmaster. And your agreement depends on the needs of your Internet business. So to re-frame the question, it would be better to ask what does your Internet business need?

Graphics work.

Obviously, all websites need to be updated with the latest graphics. Graphics can be logos, photos, posters, and so on. These need to be posted on the website on a regular basis. If your webmaster is too busy with other stuff, such tasks can be outsourced. Of course, your webmaster will still need to supervise the work and stay on top of things.

Development work.

Webmasters should also be competent when it comes to coding. There are many different types of web programming languages on the Internet – PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, CFM, etc. The most popular is PHP. Make sure that the webmaster you hire is familiar with the language that you are currently using on your website.

Development work means working on bugs on the website and coming up with new features. As you can see, there is never ending work for new features. So it’s easy to overload your webmaster with too much work. The key here is to stay organized. Make a weekly plan to roll out the features, and work on them one at a time. That way, it’s easier to have quality control, and the work gets done.

Maintaining the website.

This is another key area that your webmaster should be in charge of. Maintaining a website means keeping everything ship shape. If there is a broken link, fix it. If there are spam emails coming from the site, work on it. If there are trouble makers posting nonsense on the forum, ban them.

Professional webmasters provide quality services that cover all the above areas. You can easily hire a webmaster from an online webmaster forum. Such community sites are where webmasters hang out, and you can easily pick up a few good webmasters from there.

Small Business Internet Marketing and SEO

In today’s competitive environment, Internet marketing and SEO for small business is one of the fastest growing marketing/advertising techniques, used to meet the goals of your online business. Fine-tuning your small business site helps your site rank high in search engine results. Thus promoting your business website through Internet marketing improves the effectiveness of your website and makes your site more visible.

Internet marketing has two parts – social marketing and search marketing. SEO is an integral part of search marketing as it makes your business site more visible on search engines. A high search engine ranking enables your small business reach the ultimate goal by accessing new customers and markets.

Professional Internet marketing and search engine optimization companies offer result oriented website optimization and Internet marketing solutions to small businesses of all types. To do ethical search engine optimization service, Internet marketing companies make use of the best Internet marketing and SEO tools including keyword research tool, keyword ranking tool, website page rank checker, website evaluation tool, back links builder and dead links checker. With a strategic Internet marketing plan, Internet marketers design and develop a website that is search engine friendly.

The small business Internet marketing and SEO services aim at making your businesses more competitive on the web by optimizing your website for most popular and relevant keyphrases/keywords that target your business, be it new or established. The services involve various procedures such as website evaluation, keyword discovery and research, keyword density, website content development and management, website optimization, sitemap creation, creation of themed link pages/directory, development of Meta tag, Alt tag, title tag, keyword tag and description tag, choosing effective web page title, anchor text linking, link analysis, HTML modifications, image and hyperlink optimization, submission to search engines and directories, code streamlining and social bookmarking – all aimed at increasing the business for a website. While optimizing your business sites, it is ideal to use quality links from topic specific sites, authority sites and content related pages.

High search engine ranking draws many new and existing visitors and converts them into leads and sales. The main aim of small business Internet marketing and SEO service is to achieve marketing goals such as:

o Maximize your web presence

o Expand your small business

o Revitalize your brand

o Long term positioning

When you need Internet marketing and search engine optimization solution, run a search on the Internet to choose a high quality provider that suits your budget and time.

Internet Marketing 101: Online Marketing for Small Business

Introduction

You own a small business. Do you need a website? An Internet presence can be a necessity or a resource-draining boondoggle, depending on your business and your target audience. You shouldn’t build or maintain a website simply because “everyone else has one.” However, even if you own a one-person services company and get all the business you can handle through word of mouth, you can still create an online presence with a minimum of time and expense.

If and when you do develop a business website, you’ll need to make some kind of investment in Internet-based marketing. Consumers increasingly and overwhelmingly use the Internet to research and buy goods and services. This means the competition is robust, and if your site doesn’t announce its presence it will simply sit and gather (virtual) dust in some computer’s memory.

If you’ve convinced yourself that you need to enter the web marketing arena, the following report provides a fundamental primer on the most widely used tactics for both paid and free Internet advertising. Just remember that each of the topics introduced here is complex enough that there are entire books written about them, so if something appeals to you do some additional research before jumping in.

Before You Start

There are two main questions you must ask yourself before starting any marketing efforts, whether on- or offline: “Who is my audience?” and “What are my objectives?”

Audience

The audience for most business marketing activities is obviously past, present, and future customers. However, as in traditional advertising and marketing, it helps to narrow down who you are trying to reach, segmenting your market by age, geography, gender, interests, occupation. Certain methods of Internet marketing, such as pay-per-click ads, allow you to target your customers based on this type of segmentation.

Objectives

We can assume that the overall objective of most marketing is to sell products and/or services, but you may have additional objectives for online marketing. These related objectives will hopefully end up driving increased sales, but they can be more subtle than simply asking customers to buy right now. For example, your online marketing plan might include goals such as these:

Support and increase visibility of your company’s brand.
Improve search engine rankings.
Offer reference information related to your business sector.
Increase number of registered users or newsletter subscribers.
Drive traffic to your company website.

After defining your audience and marketing goals, you can begin to formulate an Internet marketing strategy and tactics. When getting into online marketing, it is important that you maintain brand consistency. Build on the reputation that you have already established. Your on-line presence should mirror that of your “brick and mortar” presence. Use the same logo and tagline so that people will understand that you are the same company. Having an online presence is a way to build on what you have already accomplished.

In the remainder of this report we’ll look at the most common ways you can use the Internet to deliver your message and start increasing your sales.

Table of Contents

websites

E-Mail

Newsletters

Other Announcements

Search Engine Marketing and Display Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Display Advertising

Social Media and Networking

Decide: Who, What, Where, When, and Why?

YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Etc.

Twitter

Blogs

Forums & Discussion Groups

Article Placement / E-Zines

Other Internet Marketing Outlets

Wikipedia

Directories

websites

We won’t get into the vast topic of how to build and manage a website, but if you aim to use the techniques described below, it is nearly essential to have one. Most of your marketing efforts will have a “call to action” that involves your audience visiting your website to research products or services, find contact information, sign up for a newsletter, or place an online order. Whatever you are asking people to do in your online promotions, make sure the website allows them to easily complete that task. One other vital component of any business website is an analytics program (Google offers a fairly robust application free of charge), so you can track how well your marketing efforts are working and calculate the return on your advertising investment (ROI).

How can you develop an online presence at little or no cost? There are several companies that offer free site building tools and hosting services. If you go this route, select a company that has a proven track record, so your hard work isn’t wasted when the company goes out of business or suspends the service. A couple of reliable options are Google Sites and Yola. If you have any money in your budget at all, you should probably just spend the less than $100 per year it takes to buy a personalized domain name (for example, “mybusiness.com”) and a Web hosting service. Another potential option, depending on your business and marketing goals, is to create a free blog (see below for more details). The most popular free blogging services as of this writing are WordPress and Blogger.

E-Mail Newsletters

E-mail newsletters provide one of the most highly performing avenues for marketing. You can collect customer e-mail addresses by asking visitors that come to your website to subscribe, by requesting e-mail addresses from anyone who visits your physical location, or by purchasing an e-mail list. To generate a higher rate of readership, make sure the audience is narrowly targeted and has some vested interest in your product. By sending out your newsletter on a regular schedule (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) you can counteract the transient and temporary nature of Internet users by continually reminding them of your company’s existence. Affordable services like Constant Contact can be used to manage mailing lists, statistics, and opt-in/out functions.

Caveat: Sending commercial e-mail messages to people who have not agreed to receive your mailings can result in severe fines and penalties from the federal government per terms of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Newsletter content should appeal to your defined audiences, with industry- or product-related news and events, company-specific news and events, practical reference information, and interesting statistical and demographic information. The newsletter copy should publicize links to appropriate pages within your website.

You will need to maintain one or more separate lists for the purpose of sending targeted messages to particular audiences (see Other Announcements below). You might combine all your lists to send a monthly newsletter, and send other bulletins to past or potential customers as appropriate.

Other Announcements

Other announcements are e-mailings that can consist of press releases, coupons, special notices, or anything you want to communicate specifically to members of one or more e-mail lists.

Search Engine Marketing, Pay-per-Click and Display Advertising

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization means constructing a website that is easily crawled by search engine spiders, and it encompasses a variety of techniques designed to improve your site’s (or page’s) ranking in the search engine results page. The goal is for your site to be found by searchers who are looking for sites related to a certain keyword or phrase, for example “little red wagon” if you are in the business of selling toy wagons. SEO can be divided into on-page activities (e.g., amount of content, metadata, links, programming methods and structural issues) and off-page activities (most importantly, obtaining links from other websites to your site).

Pay-per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click advertising refers to text ads displayed on search engine results pages (versus “organic” results achieved by SEO) and other sites, usually in the margins. In the case of Google AdWords and Microsoft’s adCenter, you can open an account and specify the keyword(s) that, when searched for, will generate an ad that links to your website. You pay only when a searcher clicks an ad and is directed to your site. In the example below, the key phrase is “little red wagon,” and pay-per-click ads are located at top (in yellow) and in the right-hand column (subtitled “Sponsored Links”). The first organic listing is “Little Red Wagon Foundation.”

A few of the benefits of PPC advertising are that you know exactly how many people view your ads, how many of those viewers click through to your website, and (if you are using a site analytics tool) what they do once they reach your site. You can also start and stop running ads at a moment’s notice, experiment with any number of ads you like, and fund your campaign with as little as $10 to start.

Display Advertising

Display advertising, also called banner advertising, means purchasing ad space on another website and placing a text and/or graphic ad with a link to your site. This technique is generally more complex and expensive than pay-per-click, but can be very powerful if the right message is shown to a tightly focused audience. To achieve optimal click-through rate (CTR), advertise on websites where you assume your target audience is visiting, rather than a general interest website. Most marketers don’t purchase ad space directly from another website, but use a banner ad network to automatically place ads on appropriate websites. A couple of the biggest names in display ad serving are DoubleClick and BurstMedia.

Social Media and Networking

Social networking is the latest buzz in the modern marketing arsenal. If you have any doubt about its impact, especially on the under-40 population, read this list. Small businesses with limited resources should weigh their time spent and the potential benefits carefully, however. It can also be difficult to measure the return on your investment for some of these tactics.

The general principle of “marketing” on social networking outlets is that people who have similar interests will virtually congregate around Web content that discusses that interest. They may be interested in product information in the form of reviews or personal opinion, but hard sale approaches are mostly discouraged and unproductive. Your goal is to become a trusted advisor-which usually means revealing your identity and at least some part of your personality. If that premise makes you uncomfortable, you might still find social networking sites valuable for market research purposes. Find out what people are buying and why, then use that information to help shape your other marketing activities.

The following section describes the more popular social media outlets and sites, but keep your eyes open for new virtual spaces where you might get more attention by getting in on the ground floor.

YouTube, Facebook, Etc.

YouTube allows you to post videos on your own “channel,” a distinct Web page that can be customized and allows for posting links back to your own website. A major positive aspect of this venue is that the number of views is posted and viewers can submit comments, so you know whether your videos are popular and why.

Facebook is considered the model for modern social networking sites. Facebook allows you (individual, corporate, non-profit, etc.) to create a page, attract “likes” and reviews, communicate with followers by posting status updates, photos and videos, and so on.

Although the previously named sites are the most popular in terms of visitors, there are a couple of business-oriented networking sites that may be more useful for making business connections. LinkedIn helps you develop a network of clients, service providers, and subject experts; find business opportunities and partners; post job openings; and more. More detailed advice on best practices for using LinkedIn can be found in many online articles and blogs.

Twitter

Think of Twitter as a mini-blog (see below) that allows you to broadcast messages of 140 characters or less. The messages appear to your “followers” on their phones or computers, as well as on Twitter.com. The biggest challenges are to gain a useful number of followers and to think of something engaging to write to them. If you are a speaker, writer, or performer Twitter can be used to let your fans know what you’re doing and when. If you have a retail store you might let your followers know that you’re offering a discounted item or running a special sale. You should post a Twitter sign-up link on your website, and within your signature line in outgoing e-mail messages. You can also gain followers by following people who work in or comment on your industry, as some Twitter users will follow those who follow them.

Blogs

The word blog originally came from the term “Web log.” There’s no real standard for what a blog is, but most commonly authors use them to comment on (and link to) other online news items, websites, or other Internet content. For the most part, direct selling on a blog is frowned upon and is probably a recipe for driving away potential readers. What do you write about, then? Well, if you run an Internet marketing firm you write about trends in Web marketing, what the search engines are up to, tips for do-it-yourselfers, or what you thought of the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Seriously, read some blogs and you will find all sorts of personal opinion mixed in with professional advice and commentary. The goal of your blog, however, should most likely be to establish yourself as an expert and trusted advisor in your chosen field.

You might also pursue getting your products, services, or website mentioned in related blogs by other industry experts. When a high-visibility blogger mentions a website on his or her blog, the site is exposed to a potential audience of new viewers. Often, blog postings are simply press releases that are picked up by sites that discuss topics related to a particular product or industry. More opportunities (and traffic) in this arena can be realized by developing relationships with individual bloggers.

Additional Tips:

Post an article that was written by someone else, just be sure to provide a link to the original article and give credit to the person wrote it. You can then give your commentary on the topic of the article or find a way to relate the information to local trends or challenges.

Ask colleagues to be “guest bloggers” by writing articles for you to post, again giving them credit and adding their byline and a link to their website. Using links is a good way to drive additional traffic to their sites so it’s a good trade-off for both parties.

Nick Francesco of AskNick.com said, “A blog gets people’s attention and Twitter keeps it.” Consider using these two outlets together.

Forums & Discussion Groups

A forum (also known as discussion group, message board or bulletin board) is a component of a website where users can ask questions, offer advice, or share experiences with others about a certain topic or topics. Nearly every hobby on earth has a number of popular forums wherein members offer their thoughts and feelings on all aspects of their favorite pastime. Contributing a comment (with a link to your website) in discussion groups related to your products or services can create a small surge or spike in traffic, but usually has little long-lasting effect. To maximize effectiveness, target forums on high-traffic sites that have 1,000+ users, and reply to topics with larger numbers of views (relative to other posted topics).

You can easily build your own bulletin board/forum component on your site with free or low-cost software. User forums have the potential to greatly increase the “stickiness” of a site, given a critical mass of traffic required to generate new discussions and keep participants interested in returning. You can start by “seeding” topics on your own, but there won’t be any results until traffic is directed to the forums. The conundrum for small businesses may be the time required to moderate a forum once it becomes successful. One solution is to seek out a volunteer moderator who exhibits a keen interest in your field. A sample of a baseball trading card forum is shown in the screen shot below.

Article Placement / E-Zines

Another avenue for generating incoming links and traffic to your site is the free article market. Article submission (or e-zine) websites allow you to publish articles on a variety of topics. Examples include EzineArticles and ArticleCity.com.

Depending on terms of use, these articles may be used as content on other websites, or collected on the site where submitted. The main objective of most article contributors is to increase their search engine rankings with the placement of backlinks on other reputable sites. Providing reliable and accurate reference information is secondary, and the traffic potential from article readers is questionable.

Obtaining links from article submission sites isn’t likely to improve your site’s search engine rankings much. However, existing content from a print newsletter or other written material can be re-purposed with a relatively small time investment. Be aware that creating articles from your website’s content verbatim may cause search engines to penalize your site, as the search engines take a dim view of text that is republished multiple times (“duplicate content” in search engine optimization terms). Submitting articles to sites with the most traffic will give your site the best chance to be discovered by new readers.

Caveat: Once an article is submitted, you have little or no control over who uses your content and for what purpose, depending on the copyright policies of the site on which the article is posted.

Other Internet Marketing Outlets

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is, essentially, an online encyclopedia. The unique aspect of Wikipedia is that users generate the content, though content must be approved by volunteer editors. Traffic will grow if and when others link to the entry. If you add content, your time commitment will be relatively minor, and the benefits might include improved search engine ranking and a slight increase in traffic to your site. As with other forms of Internet communication, a Wikipedia entry that is essentially a commercial for a product, service, or company will not be viewed positively and is unlikely to be approved by editors.

Directories

Online directories allow Internet users to browse through categories of topics to find websites related to a certain subject. There are directories for businesses, blogs, websites in general, and more. Many directories are free, and some only list you if you pay. The mother of free directories is the Open Directory Project, and by all accounts the best paid directory for business is the Yahoo! Directory ($299 annually). Be aware that you might wait a long time for some of the free directories to list your site, as they may rely on volunteer screeners. Directories not only allow consumers to find you in their listings, they also help get your site indexed in the major search engines. If you submit your site to a directory, make sure to read the submission guidelines and follow them exactly.

8 Internet Tips for Small Business

Over the past 3 years we have seen incredible growth in the internet both in terms of users and uses. The internet enables many small business owners to obtain customers Nationally and even Internationally for small amounts of capital. Other internet technologies can increase business efficiency. Yet so many business are daunted by the prospect and many small business owners make little use of the internet. Here are 8 tips aimed to help small business owners:

Create a website. There are lots of free packages out there to help you develop your own website. However, for relatively small amounts of money it is well worth investing in the expertise of a web developer who can create a professional website to project the correct image for your company. Just as in all walks of life, there are good, bad and indifferent web developers. Carry out your own research looking of other small business sites, most such websites have the a link to the developer on the homepage with their contact details. As such you should be able to contact the company that has developed your favourite sites.
Update your website. You have invested in a website, keep it up to date. Make sure your products or services are current. Update with recent news.
Make sure that your website is being found in search engines. There is no point in having the best small business website in the world if no one knows about it! There are a group of IT professionals that specialise in this type of work. It is know as Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short. Consider recruiting such help.
Consider internet adverts. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have their own versions of internet advertising. This will push more customers to your website.
Use Social Media. Millions of people use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These can be used to promote your business to a lot of people in little time.
Write a Blog about your business. Try to avoid writing sales articles, but offer people free helpful advice about services and products, build up a following who hopefully will then turn to you in the future.
Use an online bookkeeping program. Again, such programs save you time and allow you to access your businesses books and records wherever you are in the world that has an internet connection. It is advised to check with your accountant to see what they recommend. It may even save on your accountants charges at the end of the year.
Use online banking. This will help you save time and keep a close eye on your business finances.

Tips From Honest Income Program to Boost Your Internet Marketing Profits

In Honest Income program, Steven Wagenheim tackles three top internet business opportunities that one must take full advantage of in order to increase online income. The second of those three opportunities, and one that makes up a large section of the entire guide, is affiliate marketing.

Thus, it is important to take a closer look into what benefits one can enjoy with this online earning method and how you can improve your earnings.

The Profitability of Internet Marketing

Those who are new to internet marketing are baffled at the idea of why it is sought after by many hoping to make income online. First off, you can simply enter into an affiliate program, then promote and sell a product from your affiliate partner. You also have the ability to choose which products to promote, thus making it easier for you to focus on a given niche.

This format is indeed appealing to many since you no longer have to come up with a profitable business idea and then fund that business idea to get it into operation. All you have to think of as an affiliate marketer is to promote the product and direct web users to your affiliate merchant’s sales page. No need to worry about updating your inventory, shipping items, and dealing with customer service. There is no need to worry about producing a break-even income since whatever you earn from affiliate marketing is a profit in itself.

Honest Income Program’s Internet Marketing Methods

In Steven Wagenheim’s discussion on internet marketing, he tackles some of the basic do’s and don’ts that you must keep in mind to increase chances of success. But more importantly, he focuses on the affiliate marketer as the key factor in this formula. It therefore begins by adapting the specific skills that a good internet marketer possesses.

Wagenheim identifies three basic and most important skills that one must have: organization, work ethics, and patience.

Organizational Skills

The most important skill that any internet marketer must possess is that of proper organization. As an affiliate marketer, you cannot rely on earning your desired income by focusing on simply one product or service. In most cases, you would have to promote several products or services from your affiliates at one time to boost commissions that you can get from these products.

It is difficult to manage affiliate promotion for more than one product, though. Hence, proper organizational skills will enable you to enjoy bigger earnings through affiliate marketing.

Solid Work Ethic

Next is a good work ethic. A lot of people come into these online business opportunities thinking it is just a hobby or an additional source of income. In fact, there are a lot of people who do not take it seriously. Even if you are only engaged with affiliate marketing as a part-time job, you need to dedicate yourself into it.

Patience

The final skill that Steven Wagenheim has taught in his Honest Income program when it comes to internet marketing is the value of patience. Most people come online thinking that they can get huge amount of income overnight. There is this false misconception that you do not have to work and money will be sent to your account right away. This is indeed false. You need to work hard and be patient since it will take a while before you can build a sustainable income.