January 26, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Online Business Services – Service-based Ideas

You don’t need a product to make money online. If you already have an established service-based business you can improve your presence by marketing your services online. Many folks prefer to search for a service online rather than search through the yellow pages.

Benefits

Easy to find

If you are the only business in your local area or there are only a few, you have a good chance of getting top rankings in the search engines. This means local people will find you instantly when they enter the appropriate keywords in the search engines. For example if you enter “web site design Bowie Maryland” my business web site ranks No 1 (after Google Map results).

Expand your audience

Instead of relying on print advertising (which can get expensive) increase your exposure (inexpensively) by creating an online presence with a custom built web site. A beautifully designed web site allows you to include unlimited information about your business.

Use multimedia to enhance web site interactivity

You can build relationships with your customers by interacting with your web site visitors online. Talk to a professional web designer about your options for creating an interactive web site.

Here are some things you can do to improve interactivity:

Add content regularly – add articles, latest news, specials, coupons. Content can easily be added by incorporating a blog on your web site.

Describe your services using multimedia – add photos, videos and audio to your textual content to enhance your visitors experience. You don’t want your visitors to just read text but also appeal to their visual and auditory senses.

Get testimonials from satisfied customers – this helps build trust and credibility with your future customers.

Create a contact form – visitors have many questions. Add a contact form and include your email address and phone number as well ( for the shy visitors).

Here are a few examples of the types of service-business services you can offer online:

General contracting, remodeling
Coaching
Consulting
Computer services
Web Design and development
Repair services

If you need a custom built web site for your online business services visit:
Web Site Design Services Maryland

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January 20, 2009 by 8 Comments

Online Business Ideas – Ecommerce store

3. Online ecommerce store

If you have one product or 1000s of products to sell consider offering them online. Many local merchants are expanding there brick and mortar business by creating an online store that carries the same products as their offline store. This increases their audience and sales because they aren’t limited by the geographical location of their physical store.

How to find a product or products to sell

Select a product that is in high demand but not sold in large box stores ie Walmart, BestBuy, Sports Authority. These large stores can afford to offer very low prices because they buy in bulk.

Example:
Sinkbiz.com
I created an online store for this customer who sells all types of sinks ranging from stainless steel to porcelain, and eco-taps. Customers purchase the sinks online which then get shipped via UPS.

How to set-up an online store

First you need to register a domain name then build your online store by creating a web site. To process orders online you’ll need a shopping cart, merchant account, payment gateway, SSL certificate and web hosting. An alternative to purchasing your own merchant account is to use PayPal. It enables you to process orders online without signing up for a merchant account.

Read my article: How to Build an Ecommerce Web Site Using the PayPal Shopping Cart

How to market your online store

It’s not enough to just place your store online. Make sure you submit your web site address to specialized directories and local directories. Find related web sites that are already well established on the Net and ask them to place your link on their web site. To do this you may need to offer something in return ie a well written article, money or a even free sample of your product.

Try different marketing strategies until you find one that continually generates traffic to your online store.

To receive information on ways to generate traffic visit
101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site

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January 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

Online Business Ideas – Information Products

2. How to create and sell information products

You can sell someone else’s products (affiliate programs) or create your own information product. Creating your own product is better because you’re not just receiving a commission. Instead you receive the full price of the product.

Types of information products

The easiest info-products to create and sell are ebooks or short reports. A large ebook may take months to write however a short report of approximately 20 pages will only take a few days. If you sell the report for $7-$10 people would have less resistance purchasing it than if you were selling a large ebook for $97.00

Benefits of creating an ebook or report

Easy to create

You can write your ebook or report then save it as a PDF file in Open Office(openoffice.og) The PDF file can be downloaded by visitors after they make the payment from the sales page of your web site.

Low cost

Your only cost is a web site and a web host to get it online. Once this is set up you can sell your ebook/report 24 hours a day automatically hands-free.

Recruit affiliates

You can increase your ebook sales by offering affiliates a 50% commission for every ebook they sell.

Allow reprint rights

Charge a fee for people that have the complete reprint rights to your ebook. They place there own affiliate links in the ebook and sell it for the same price to others.

For more information on how to create and market your ebook please visit: Article Marketing Strategies.

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January 14, 2009 by 1 Comment

Online Business Ideas – Affiliate Progams

One of the major problems of starting an online business is knowing where to start. There are many ways to make money online but you need to pick idea then go with it all the way till it makes money. Once it is profitable you can expand or duplicate it. For example when I started my web design business I focused exclusively on designing web sites. Later I added web hosting and search engine optimization services. I also created several ebooks to generate some passive income.

Please read my previous articles before selecting one of the online business ideas below.

Starting an online business – 7 questions to ask before you jump in

Starting an online business – How to have the correct mindset

7 Online Business Ideas

1. Affiliate Programs

I mentioned this one first because it is the easiest online business to start. You make money by selling someone elses products. You make a commission everytime you sell something. The parent company processes all the payments, tracks the sales then sends you a commission for each sale. Often they also provide banners, emails, even a web site to help you make sales. It’s in their best interest to make you a great affiliate because they make money when you make money.

Find companies that offer large commissions, and will track clients for multiple sales over a long period of time (ie lifetime) so you can get recurring commissions. Make sure they offer multiple tiers (at least 2) for sales. ie you still get paid if one of your affiliates makes a sale.

Oe of the best examples is the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program from Ken Envoy.

He offers a number of great products with high commissions with excellent sales materials and content to help you presell his products.

Read the free ebook: Affiliate Masters Course to become a high-earning affiliate champion.

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