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 Essential Oils Make GREAT gifts. Go to Sign Up Here and then enter #322979 Whether you are a newbie to business or have been in business for a while there are some common steps to take to get started on-line. First of all be sure to use integrity. If you offer a service or product which is reliable at a reasonable price you will get repeat customers and referrals. The best way to get them to come back is for your business to Exceed Expectations - give your customer more than their money's worth and watch your business grow. Do you have an entrepeneural spirit? Do you have an existing business off-line and want to put it on-line? By 2008 purchases done over the web are projected to reach over $183 million. On a worldwide scale revenues are wide open! Home business is now a $427 billion industry. So get started now. Surefootedmama's formula for success on the internet includes 5 main steps. The process of setting up an on-line business has the following basic discreat steps. If you skip some of these steps, don't expect the customer to come! First, you need a product idea or finished product or service to offer. Second, you will need an ecommerce website with a merchant account. Third, you will need to generate traffic to your site. Fourth, if you are smart you will get the e-mail addresses of your customers so you can contact them in the future with follow-up offers. Step One - What Will Your Site Offer? Most people begin a new home business in their spare time. First you need to make some decisions. What are you selling? (If you already have a retail business off-line you may just want to skip to Step Two below.) If you are not now in business, think about what is your expertise? You have KNOWLEDGE that is of value to someone else. You likely don't even realize it -- but you do! Can you write? If you currently offer a service that you can provide in ONLY one city for example, you probably have an area of expertise that you can write about. Perhaps people in other parts of the country or world would like to learn what you know. If you are an expert on something and you can write well, I suggest that you might want to consider developing a valuable informational "how to" book and sell it on-line as an ebook or at the very least offer a quarterly newsletter. If you are not sure what your expertise is think about your hobbies, what do you do for fun? Most people discount their expertise (especially if it is something they do for fun) but your hard earned knowledge could be very useful or beneficial to someone else. So don't discount what you know. After you brainstorm some ideas, do a search of the net to see who else is doing this already and study their sites. How can you make your site more useful or more unique? At this point your will want to brainstorm some ideas for domain names and then reserve a site name for your identity. People doing home businesses average about $50K per year and 20% make over $75,000 per year. So what are you waiting for? Once you have decided on a good topic for your ebook or ezine I have found the following Free 5 day e-mail course invaluable! 
Click here and send a blank e-mail to receive The Netwriting Masters course... It's an intensive 5-Day e-mail course that shows you how to become an effective e-persuader. Step Two - Get A Merchant Account Set up your ecommerce site and establish a merchant account so that customers can purchase on-line using credit cards. Without this capability your on-line business will grow more slowly GUARANTEED! So make it easy for your customers to purchase on-line. Also be sure you can assure them that their purchases will be made in a secure environment. Do you believe in yourself and your product? We know that in life, there are those who act and those who only talk about it. Your words have to guide your reader-cum-customer smoothly, easily and carefully to your order form. Nothing more, nothing less. This is how you make sales! I have found a great service where companies or individuals can more simply & easily design and maintain their own secure E-Commerce Web site. This does not require a lot of technical expertise. Here’s your chance to take action. There will never be a better time to do it. This is way COOL - take a video tour. There are other ecommerce merchant account dealers but I believe this one is the best. The ease of use is hard to beat! But wherever you decide to get your merchant account - GET ONE, because this is a VITAL step to your success as a viable on-line business. Step Three - Announcing to the World Generating traffic will be the next task. Attracting a targeted market is critical. You will need to get listed with the major search engines and you will also need to resubmit your site on a regular basis. You can submit your site now for free. Search engine listings are the primary way you will reach your customers on-line especially until word of mouth gets around about you. One thing not to overlook at this stage is using the right keywords so people who are searching for your topic will find your site. Not being widely listed in search engines could be a virtual kiss of death, so be sure you cover this point. After you have submitted to the search engines you will want to do some advertising. You can spend money on ads (and on key words at the search engines) or if you are on a budget or just don't want to leave any stone unturned remember that free advertising is available and can be effective. Growing businesses have found that effective, continuous advertising pays for itself. Feed your business through regular, effective advertising and it will grow strong and you will be prosperous. It is wise to develop a deliberate program of advertising month in and month out. Whether you are just starting out (on a limited budget) or have been in business for a while do not overlook Free advertising - what have you got to lose? Don't forget to put your web address on all correspondence (use a signature line on all of your e-mail with a hot link to your site) and on your business cards. Improve your business image with the click on a mouse! Use your own letterhead on each e-mail you send. BannersGoMLM has a hot free-advertising-for-life program! Check it out and join today. I have found a wonderful way to generate new traffic using a program called AdNetwork. The Most Effective Way You Can Advertise is to Get someone else to do it for you for FREE. These are the best start page programs I have found. Webmasterquest I like Webmasterquest because you can set multiple sites to send traffic to easily and they have great contests. It is actually my favorite traffic generation site. With TrafficSwarm you can choose the category where your site is listed and also which category you want to surf - this eliminates viewing a lot of junk sites. Click Silo gives you 1:1 ratio of traffic and its easy to use. Step Five - Follow Up Staying in touch with clients via e-mail newsletters and updates is a powerful way to market, and instead of being impersonal, it extends your personality out to them very effectively. By all means, insist that your staff routinely collect e-mail addresses both from walk-in business, existing clients, and from Internet contacts. You'll find that this growing 'house list' of e-mail addresses will become marketing 'gold' for your traditional company. Collect and keep the e-mail addresses of your customers so that you know who they are and how to reach them when you have a new product or a special sale. If you don't plant you can not harvest! The company I use to keep my e-mail client list is called Listbot.com and there are others providing this service as well. You should know what your target audience is seeking. You might also want to take a survey of your customers and offer them something free for answering the survey so you can get information about your customer and their needs or interests. You could offer a newsletter to your customers. This is a good way to get them to send you their e-mail address. One caution: I would not recommend sending an e-zine more than quarterly unless you have some special offer. People are busy and if they receive an e-mail from you too often they may not look at it, so I would recommend sending quarterly or monthly at MOST. But you must decide - this is just my opinion. I hope you have found Surefootedmama's formula for success on the internet useful and informative. If you follow these 4 main steps in your process of setting up an on-line business you should be well on your way to achieving the success you desire. You can also make money on-line providing services people need. Click here to find out how I earn the lion's share of my business income. I love to help people by saving them money. This is primarily in America at this time. If you live in California or know someone who does, that is our top market this is selling like hotcakes there. Don't miss this one. 
Do you have friends who want to start an on-line business?Please refer them of Surefootedmama!! Click here to return to Surefootedmama's home page. Copyright 2000 - 2008
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