How To Setup A Successful Online Business In 7 Easy Steps

Do you want your own online business? No more than ever it is possible to start a business quickly and inexpensively. Below are seven steps you can follow that will help you start off in the right direction every time.

1. Find a product to sell. You can create the product yourself. You can sell an affiliate product on a commission basis, or you can find a private label rights product that allows you to edit and resell as your own product. The product can be an ebook in a pdf format, or audio format. Video or software could be the product as well. If you are enthusiastic about the product and believe in it, you will have an easier time selling it.

2. Register a domain name that fits your product. If at all possible, include the key words that relate to the product in the domain name. Since domain names are not very expensive these days register several similar names. The content would be basically the same in each one.

3. Find a web host that is reliable and affordable. Make sure the web host has an easy to use control panel so you can upload your web pages yourself. Many of the most popular hosts use CPanel which is very easy for you to master quickly.

4. Create a small website or have someone create it for you. Some websites are only one page long, although it's a very long one page. Others are only three or four pages of content. There are free website sales page templates you can search for and use in your site. When writing the content for the sales page stress the attributes of your product. Make sure your headline grabs the visitors attention and pulls them into the copy. If you include endorsements or testimonials make sure they are from real people. Ask for the sale more than once and include a link to the order page.

5. Set up a payment processor. PayPal is quick, free and easy to set up. There is a fee to process the transactions. This fee is taken right out of each sale so you do not need to keep records. Tell your visitors they do not have to have a PayPal account to use PayPal, they can use their credit card. You have access to your money and can withdraw the money nearly immediately. Clickbank is another alternative. Clickbank takes longer to get your account approved and there is a fee to set up the account. Like Paypal, there is a fee per transaction and a percentage based on the price of the product sold through Clickbank.

6. Be sure to set up product delivery as instant and automatic. Doing this serves your best interest as you do not waste a lot of time emailing the product or download link to the customer after they have paid. And it serves your customer's best interest since they do not have to wait to download their product.

7. Drive targeted traffic to your website. You can use search engine optimization and keywords research. One fantastic approach is article placement in ezine directories. You can participate in discussion forums. And one of the newer marketing methods is social bookmarking.

True these seven steps do not go into any great technical, this is because to much detail would only slow you down in the beginning. There will be plenty of time later to learn the technical side of everything. For now, just get started.

Increasing conversion by SitePal's Talking Characters

Most website visitors leave a site within a few seconds after landing on it. If you can't make them stay a little longer, you will lose them. What's worse is they'll leave your site for your competitors'. Make your web visitors stay a little longer, and increase your chance of generating leads.

Many people believe they need more website visitors to increase leads. But, if you have a steady stream of visitors, you won't need more website visitors to close your sales or generate leads online. According to a study, less than 4% of website visitors actually buy your products or invest in your services. This is called the conversion rate. Most website conversion rates are actually somewhere between 0% to 4%. If you have less than 1.5% it is wiser to spend more time improving your conversion rate than trying to increase number of visitors.

A Study showed that a SitePal-integrated site performs better.

SitePal is an Internet-based subscription service that allows you to create a wide-array of animated speaking characters, which can be added to your website for a variety of professional and personal applications. According to Dr. Ralph F. Wilson's article Engaging Site Visitors with SitePal Animated Speaking Characters, a SitePal-integrated website increases the website visitors' average time on the site by 33%. The article also shows that website visitors for a SitePal-integrated website views 17% more of a page than a non-SitePal-integrated website.

What can SitePal do?
A SitePal avatar can deliver your message. Unlike other web streaming audio you can deliver your message in a friendlier way since SitePal is a human-like talking character. It moves its eyes as you move your mouse on a website as if somebody on the page is watching you. The avatar can also answer visitor's questions by speaking, or it can introduce benefits of some of your best selling products. A live voice is friendlier and more powerful than text on a webpage.

Some SitePal integrated websites.

Think Big Real Estate
In a very competitive marketplace, Think Big Real Estate.com needed to stand above the rest of the competition. With statistics showing that over 75% of homebuyers search for a new property by using the Internet, Think Big executives wanted to be sure to grab the attention of every potential client that visited their website.

Goldfish Software, LLC
Goldfish Software implemented SitePal to provide customers with more consultative information about its products. As a result, the company has experienced an increase in conversion at a rate of 33% since the launch of the SitePal character.

How to integrate SitePal to your website

You first design the avatar's appearance such as gender, hair style, accessories and so on. You can do this through SitePal's web-based admin page. Then record audio file. (There are several ways to do this) Then you will get a few lines of Javascript code which you need to put into your web page's code.

Having a SitePal character in your website will certainly help you stand out among your competition's websites.

Grab now SitePal for your site!.

Have you been to one of those websites that has an animated talking avatar? There is no doubt, the Sitepal buddies are all the rage now and they are COOL! They will soon be all over MySpace I am sure.

Welcoming someone to your site with just text and pictures is a trick few websites master. That's where the Sitepal buddies come in. These talking animated avatars are there to serve as anything you want them to. You might use them to greet your customers, tell them about special deals, tell them what your site is about, explain your companies return policies, ....anything you can dream of. These little animated buddies aren't as good as real salesmen, but they sure give your site a cool vibe.

There are no downloads and any site owner should be able to use Sitepal quite easily as very little technical skill is required to get you up and running. You can personalize your character by choosing through hairstyles, face models, facial hair, shirts, and accessories. You can also choose between background settings or use your own.

The Sitepal buddies are available in 14 languages now and over 60 voices. The truly fun part is their text to speech option where the avatar speaks whatever you type in. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not play around with that for at least a couple of minutes!

All sorts of people are starting to use this technology now including MySpace subsribers, Ebay auctions, and tons of online businesses. This is the wave of the future as I see it and if you haven't stumbled into a site using the Sitepal buddies yet you soon will!!

6 Steps To Improve Customer Loyalty From Site Visitors

by Omaro Ailoch

Online shopping has quickly outstretched high street shopping for popularity and overall spend. One of the big advantages that consumers gain is the ability to comparison shop for a better deal. However, for the e-store owner or service provider, this can make it difficult to survive without offering the lowest prices and the greatest deals. Decreasing prices has an obvious effect on your revenue and profit so it is vital that you aim for the right target market and attempt to build customer loyalty.

Customer loyalty means repeat business and repeat customers offer the lowest marketing spend requirements. As such, improving customer loyalty can vastly reduce your spend and increase your ROI. Many of the methods of retaining customers for your website are developed from tried and trusted methods used by large organizations and businesses offline.

Know Your Target Markets

By really getting to know and understand your target markets you will have a much greater understanding what it is that they're after. By learning this kind of information you will be better placed to send out relevant after-sales communication and entice your buyers to buy more.

Know Your Competitors

Knowing what your competitors are selling and for how much will help you determine the best prices for your own products. If you have a good customer retention rate it is often possible to increase the amount you pay for a new customer or reduce your prices without affecting your overall profit too much.

Customer Service

Perhaps the first aspect that many of us consider when looking at customer retention rates is customer service. You must supply a high level of customer service. If you go the extra mile for your customer, they will go the extra mile to come back to your site. Being polite in all communications is only a very small part of good customer service. Everything from your website content to complaint responses need to be well thought out and geared towards retaining customers.

Branding

The more synonymous your website becomes with the products or services you sell, the more likely that people will return to your site. Make sure that all of your web pages, emails, newsletters, invoices, and other forms of communication include your web address at the very least. Make it memorable and don't chop and change designs and logos unless a re-branding is deemed absolutely necessary.

After-Sales Communication

There is an art to after sales communication, and it is an art that you need to learn to master. So, your website operates online, but that doesn't mean that the whole of your business has to. If you sell digital products that are downloaded then ensure that emails and all online communication includes your branding. If you sell physical products, then your paper invoices, and everything down to your packing labels should also be branded.

Get Your Visitors Involved

Involving your site visitors will help to bring them back to your site time and time again. Web 2.0 applications provide a plethora of ways to involve site visitors. Blogs, forums, and any interactive tool will help to make your site bookmarkable. Even for visitors that don't take action while on your site, you will attract them back more frequently, and the more exposure a visitor has to your website, the more likely they become to make a purchase.

Why Customer Loyalty Is Important To Your Business Website

Return visitors or return customers are one of your greatest assets. You've already done a lot of the hard work with your preliminary marketing campaigns. Ensure that everything from your website to your email newsletter to your packing slips are effectively branded with your website details and always uphold the highest level of customer service and communication. If you can get your site visitors more involved in your site then you stand to profit even more from customer loyalty.

About the Author
Omaro Ailoch is a senior software engineer, an entrepreneur and the founder of OC IT Services a highly skilled California based web development, design, and search engine optimization firm.

Promoting Your Products with Search Engine Marketing

by Michael Fleischner

Do you have a new product or an existing product that you'd like to promote? Search engine marketing can be an effective technique if you know how to optimize your online campaigns and manage your marketing spends effectively.

Most major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN offer pay-per-click advertising. Additionally, you can find search engine marketing opportunities that are associated with an annual fee such as ExactSeek.

You can expect less traffic from second tier search engines like ExactSeek simply because these engines reach a much smaller audience. None-the-less, using second tier search engines can be a great value depending on how competitive the keywords are that can be associated with your product.

Search engine marketing is largely focused on using pay-per-click advertising to promote and sell your product. There are generally two approaches that you can take to best utilize this marketing method. The first approach is to use common keywords associated with your product or service. The second method is to use long-tail keywords or keyword phrases.

Search engines like Google make it very easy to find appropriate keywords to promote your website. Once you set up a Google Adwords account, you can have Google spider your site and propose relevant search terms. When evaluating the list, look for those search terms that are frequently searched for but face little competition. This results in a list of targeted keywords that you can promote.

You can also use the Overture keyword search tool which is available online. Simply enter the common search term or phrases associated with your website and evaluate search traffic results. The only downside to using this method is that you will only know how popular the search terms are but not the competitiveness of the terms.

Long tail keywords involve searching for common search phrases that have little traffic but also very little competition. Again, you can use Google or other tools to find these long-tail keywords. Taken in isolation, a few long-tail keywords won't generate significant clicks or revenue for you. However, when bidding on dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these long-tail keywords, you may find that you can generate significant traffic and conversions.

One of the key aspects of search engine marketing, regardless of which search engine you choose, is measuring the effectiveness of your keyword campaigns. With the help of Google tracking, this is easier than ever. By placing a small block of code on your payment confirmation (thank you) page, Google conversion tracking can tie the sale back to the specific text link or display ad that generated the sale.

Evaluate this information on a regular basis and fine tune your online search marketing campaigns. You should also set daily spending caps for your keyword related efforts.

Depending on the keywords you choose, the quantity of those keywords, and so on, your costs can be significant. Daily caps protect you by setting a maximum spend for your campaign.

Search engine marketing is a great way to promote a new or existing product or service if you carefully select your keyword phrases, place caps on your daily spend, and track conversions. When using this form of online marketing, pay attention to your successes and failures and reinvest where returns are positive.

About the Author
Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. To discover how to improve search engine rankings on Google and other major search engines visit http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com/ and the Marketing Blog.