Getting Back To Basics

Getting Back To Basics

There is a pile of people that want to make money online. Why is it so appealing? Well earning money online seems to be easier, more passive and doesn’t involve the grind of the 9 to 5. The thing is that many of us get moving so quickly that we forget to plan. If you have been finding that you are not getting what you think you should be out of you online business, perhaps you need to get back to basics and make sure that you covered everything when you started up. Alternatively perhaps you are thinking about starting up and are not quite sure how to get going. Regardless you need to make sure that you have a plan and you try hard to stick to it.

The first thing you need is to choose your industry and then a niche. There simply is not much point selling a product or a service online, if someone already, and perhaps at a better price has done it. Think about a niche market that you can satisfy. Do some research and find out what people need and what you would be comfortable selling. Brain storm, and hopefully you end up with a product or a service that other people will use and want.

Once you have chosen what you are going to sell you need to get an idea of who you are selling to. Get to know your prospects and future clients. What kind of people will you be selling to? Is there anything that would make their purchasing easier for them? You need to identify their needs, demands, questions and problems, their buying power, online behavior and preferences. You can do this through research and trial and error. But try not to do too much trialing and have too many errors, because if your market is very niche, then you need make sure you don’t scare all your prospects off.


At this point you should build your website. If you want potential customers to trust your service and your online store and you are going to get that trust you will need to make sure your site looks professional. Security is of the utmost importance and so is displaying your knowledge in the particular field.

At this point you may find that you are getting a lot of visitors and aren’t spending much time processing orders :) . This is probably because people want to make sure your site is the real thing before they commit to buying from you. To make sure that you stay in touch with these customers / potential customers, you need to make sure that you have an optin form to collect their email addresses. Just doing this means you can communicate with them and also start building your customer base. Remember-the profit is in the list.

Then you also make sure that you advertise your products and have the backing of secondary sites talking about your products. You can try PPC advertising, article marketing, banner ads and paid links.

Jim

Four Free Traffic Sources

Traffic is a constant struggle for any online business person or marketer. I have constantly been looking for fast ways for getting consistent traffic. One of the big problems in getting traffic is that if you’re not careful you could run up a tab for thousands of dollars for some pretty poor advertising that gets you no where. When you are getting traffic, it had better be targeted. With that said, and that in mind, here are four free effective strategies I have been using to pull in the traffic.

Tip 1. Forums.

Find a forum in your niche and get posting some high value pure quality content that is going to entice your fellow forum members to get to know you and what you do. Don’t spam and never overly self-promote, just offer up some solid content on your niche, earn respect, and leave a link back to your website in your signature box. I find the greater the content (in quality and quantity) the greater number of visitors pouring into my site. The best bit about all of this, is that it can actually be good fun.

Tip 2. Videos

There are well over 200 video sharing websites out there that you can submit your video too, totally for free. Again, the trick is providing some upfront solid content that is going to lead your viewers into wanting to know more about what you are doing. Leave a link in the description box and let the traffic flow from there. There is nothing wrong in flashing your link up during the video either.

Tip 3. Articles

Article directories are excellent places for grabbing some good traffic. Informative, well written flowing articles can often lead to some high click-through rates of 50% and beyond. It is targeted traffic as well, with most people on article directories there for research purposes.

Tip 4. Twitter

Twitter has become incredibly powerful lately in terms of traffic, with some people making nine sales from a contact list of around sixty people. That conversion rate is excellent, considering not all sixty of those people would be clicking on the link. Social networking sites like this are awesome for generating some nice and easy traffic for free, and they are also a good place to meet people and make connections in your area or niche.

Do the above right, and provide some awesome content and you could easily get hundreds and thousands of visits to your site in a month or maybe a week. It is all about delivering great content, and setting yourself apart from your competitors. Free traffic does not have to be hard traffic, and free traffic is often the “buying traffic” provided you laser target your campaigns to your niche. Consistent, actionable, solid content is the key.

Jim