We’ve seen a few tips about choosing a provider that will help you create your e-commerce website. Some of the main elements involve comparing prices between various web development companies and checking the reputation of your provider. There are also a few other tips that will help you save some money on getting your web store up, especially if you don’t have much of a budget. Here are some of them:

• Work with a freelancer as opposed to a professional web development company

If you just want to build a small site to begin your online money making efforts, then having your website designed by a freelancer as opposed to a professional design firm. While they could be very competent, web design firms that do e-commerce sites often charge very high prices, such as over $1000 for a website. Of course, not every new online entrepreneur could afford that. The alternative would be working with a freelancer, who could create a website for you for less than $100 in some cases. You can browse through the buy/sell section of many internet marketing forums, as well as take a look at freelancer sites like Odesk and Freelancer.com to find some people willing to do the task. One of the advantages of freelancing sites and forums is that checking the reputation of the service provider becomes much easier, as there is usually a feedback system as well as comments left on the thread by other clients.

• Design some of the elements of the site yourself

If you are able to do so, then you should definitely create some of the elements on your site by yourself. For example, if you are good in graphic design, you could create your own logos, buttons and website background, and just send them over to the provider that is creating your website. This will allow your website to be completed much faster and will also save you some money, as there will be less work for the provider to do.

• Avoid packages that include hosting

This is both for quality and price reasons. There are some e-commerce website providers that offer hosting solutions. However, these are often much more expensive than getting your own account at a web host. If you are going to build a small website, then you can find quality web hosting for around $5 – $8 per month. Many providers charge many times that and their web hosting is actually not too better in terms of quality, as they are simply using a reseller account on a web host like GoDaddy. After, if your site grows, you can get yourself a VPS hosting solution for around $30 to $50 a month. This will give you more reliability and flexibility than using a shared web hosting account. Also, managing the hosting yourself gives you more control over your website and makes it easier to make some advanced changes and troubleshoot problems if they occur, as opposed to letting a provider manage everything for you.

When it comes to getting visitors to your business website, there are plenty of ways to do it. Some of these methods are free, while some others require an investment to be made in terms of advertising budget. But what if you don’t have that much money to get started? Is it still possible to get free visitors to your website? The answer would be yes. Here are some of the ways that you can employ.

• Get Listed in Google Places

Time and time again, online marketing experts will recommend that anyone who has a website for their business gets a free listing in Google Places. Why? A few simple reasons: its free and can help you get visitors, both to your website and to your actual business. All you need to do would be to list your business and it would appear in a few days.

• Put your website on your receipts, bags, printed materials, etc.

Some of your existing and potential clients may not even know that you have a website. By putting it out in front of them, you are increasing the chance that they will see it and go visit it. This also has the effect of increasing customer loyalty. A customer who visits your website will be more likely to buy from you again in the future, as it serves as a reminder that your business exists.

• Use social networking

Facebook is the second most popular website in the world, right after Google. So if you don’t have a Facebook page, then you are leaving traffic on the table. Simply create a Facebook page for your business, filled with information about your latest offerings, and prominently include links to the relevant portions of your website. Create special, Facebook only discounts and promotions to boost its efficiency.

Twitter is also a popular social networking service. It works a bit differently from Facebook: you send out short messages to your followers, called Tweets. These Tweets can include a link to the relevant part of your site, such as the page for a new product, or to a promotion that you are having for the season.

• Have your website on your business sign, your vehicles, etc.

This can serve as a very effective way of getting free traffic. For example, if your business is closed and someone passes by who might be interested in what you have to offer, they could remember your website and then check it out later. Keep in mind that very few people will actually note down your website URL, but will rather remember it from memory. Therefore, it needs to be something that is memorable and something that would not be confused with one of your competitors websites. Remember, you can have multiple domain names pointing to your main website, so if you think your main domain would be too hard to remember, consider getting an alternate one. This definitely has the potential of getting a few extra visitors to your site when you need them.

When it comes to online advertising options for a local business, there are plenty of choices that are open to you. Some of these options are completely free, while others will require you to spend some money and thus create an advertising budget. But one of the advantages of online advertising is that it is not as expensive as other methods, such as television or radio ads. It is also possible to very specifically target the audience that you want to reach, so that only people who have a high chance of being interested in your products end up seeing your ads.

One of these options is media buying. Now, many of you who are not familiar with online marketing terms may wonder what media buying consists of. Basically, it means that you will be buying advertising space on another website and paying for these ads according to different business models. Here are the ones that are the most commonly used in the media buying industry:

Fixed fee – You pay a certain fee to have your ad displayed in a permanent position on a certain website. This fee could be for a day, a week, two weeks, a month or even longer. Usually with this option, your ad is not rotated, meaning that it stays in one spot on the website for the entire time that you have paid for it. The costs will vary depending on the ad location as well as the traffic that the site receives. As such, the price for a daily ad on a site with a moderate amount of traffic could be as little as $4, while one on a site receiving tens of thousands of daily visitors (such as a popular news site in your city), a daily ad could cost you $1000 or even more.

CPM (or cost per views) – Here, you will pay a certain amount for every thousand visitors that view your ad. Every view is counted, so you will pay the same amount whether a visitor clicks your ad to go to your site or not. Once again, the amount you pay will vary on the popularity of your site, as well as the location of the site where your ad is put in. Ads which are displayed in prominent parts of the site tend to cost more.

CPC (or Cost Per Click) – This is similar to pay per click (or PPC) ads that you see on Google sponsored results. You will pay an amount for each person that clicks on your ad and is thus redirected to your site. Costs will vary depending on the site where you are advertising. They can be as low as $0.01/click up to $1.00 or more for each click you receive.

Tomorrow, we will explore more details about online media buying, such as which websites you can advertise on and the types of ads that you can create for your business.

As we all know, any webmaster wants their website to get traffic, and as much targeted traffic as they possibly can get. Of course, there are certain ways to get that traffic and a webmaster needs to do some actions in order to receive it. People will not just randomly type your website address in their browser to get to your site. They have to somehow find it first. One of the most common ways for people to find a website online is to make a query in a search engine for a keyword that they are interested in. In order to get your site as close as you can to the top of the search results, you need to do some SEO work. But SEO is not always the right solution to get traffic to your website. Let’s take a look at for what type of webmaster is SEO important for:

• You are building a long-term business centered around 1 main site

If you expect your website to be the online address of your main business, then doing SEO will have many advantages. You will not need to spend as much money advertising, as people will be able to find your site through natural search results. By doing proper SEO, you will be able to eventually get ahead of your competitors on search engines like Google. Since you have long term plans, then you have a bit more time to get your site to get a decent amount of traffic.

• You don’t want to spend too much time or money on advertising

There are many solutions available online where you can advertise your site and pay either for the number of views that your ad has received or the amount of clicks that it gets. But, not everybody wants to spend time tracking and optimizing various ad campaigns so that they will yield the maximum results. Also, not everyone has the budget necessary to constantly pay for online advertising. In that case, focusing on getting traffic from natural search results could be the right path for you to go on.

• Your business is in a niche that is not very competitive

If your business is in a niche that is quite specialized and doesn’t have many competitors, then using SEO techniques to get your site to the top is a great way to get the traffic that you want. Since you do not have a lot of competitors, it will be a lot easier to get your site to number one of the search results on Google. You will also spend far less time on SEO work than someone who is operating in a very competitive niche.

But are there cases where SEO is not the best choice? Yes, it depends on what kind of site you are putting up. We’ll take a look at these cases tomorrow and see what other ways you could use to bring traffic to your website in these cases.

When you are looking to advertise online, you will find that there are plenty of ways to do so. But one complaint of many internet marketers is that they don’t have much of a budget for their marketing activities. But this is not a problem if you are serious about succeeding online. There are plenty of ways for you to get the word out about your website without you having to pay anyone. Sure, it will take a bit more work on your part, but the results will definitely be worth it. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Article Marketing

One of the most famous ways to get the word out about your business, product or website. All you have to do is to write articles which are related to your niche and include a link to your website either at the end of the article or in the body of the article (this depends on the rules of the site where you put up your articles). You would then submit them to various online article directories.

Video Marketing

Video marketing means creating videos about your business and then uploading them to popular video sharing sites such as YouTube. Users will then watch the videos and have the opportunity to continue on to your site by clicking a link if they like what they see. If people really like your video, there is always the possibility that they will share it with their friends, who will then share it with theirs, etc. This creates what is called the “viral effect” and means that your video could potentially be seen by millions of people everywhere.

Social Media

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook are being used by millions of people from all over the world. Creating a presence on these sites for your business is an excellent way to get visitors to your site. Remember, the traffic is already there on these sites. All that you have to do is to capture it.

Classified Ad Sites

These sites function in a way similar to newspaper classified ads, except that they are more flexible and powerful. On most sites, placing an ad is free. Certain sites allow you to include a link to your website, while others charge you a small fee for each ad in order to do so. Classified ad sites are definitely worth checking out to see if they are a good marketing tool for your business. These cost much less than newspaper ads and are much more likely to generate traffic and customers for your business than print advertising.

This is just an overview of ways that you can use to market your site. If you want to succeed in the world of internet marketing, you definitely should get familiar with them. Remember that these aren’t methods only used by “cheap” or small time marketers who can’t afford other ones. Even successful online businesses that make millions each year use them, so why shouldn’t you?

Another thing that you will need to take into account when you open up a web marketing agency is how much you will be charging your clients for the services that you provide. You will want to have prices that are very competitive and yet still allow you to make a decent amount of profit.

Of course, the exact way that you structure your pricing remains your decision. After all, it’s your business, right? In order to get an idea, look at what your competitors are charging and then make your price list accordingly.

Another thing that you should do is to create a few different packages for your clients to choose from. That way, you will be able to suit everyone’s needs, no matter what their budget is. Let’s say you are offering a web promotion service in which you place classified ads for your clients and also write articles and submit them to various article directories. You could create several different packages depending on how many ads you will post each day and how many articles will be created in total for the client.

Now what happens if you get so many clients that you don’t always have the time to complete all the work quickly? Or what if you truly want to expand your business and make even more money? All of this is of course possible. Remember, even the top web marketing agencies that employ dozens of people have probably started as a one man operation out of someone’s house.

If you want to expand, there is one big thing that you have to do: hire some staff to help you. Here, you basically have two choices: you can either hire freelancers from anywhere in the world, or actually hire some local staff members as full time employees. If your business is just starting to pick up steam, the best bet is to go with the first option for now. If you browse internet marketing forums, or freelancing sites, you will find that there are plenty of people who are capable of doing tasks that will be useful for you such as designing web sites, creating graphics and logos, posting on classified ads sites, writing articles and content for sites, etc. Freelancers have the advantage of being much more cost effective versus actually hiring full time workers, as you would only need to pay them when you actually need them to work on a project.

Later on, as your business grows, you can then hire a full time staff that will produce the required work for your clients or help you with general administrative tasks such as processing payments from clients, answering their questions and explaining your services, etc. Of course, this is not something that you absolutely need to do. If you only want to do this business as a part time side venture that you run from your home, you can always keep it that way. This is the advantage of being your own boss: you can set your objectives as high or as low as you want.

Two different methods of internet marketing, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, are pay per click (PPC) advertising and organic SEO. Let us take quick look how to affectively use them and what some of the benefits and drawbacks are.

PPC Advertising

PPC is exactly what it sounds like, you pay every time somebody clicks your advertisement, the most popular PPC network is Google Adwords but there are many different providers of PPC programs. The most obvious benefits to PPC advertising are immediate exposure to your market, flexible plans for spending (theoretically the more you spend, the more traffic you get) and quite a bit of control over the whole operation. Using PPC advertising networks can be tricky but there are rules and guidelines that you can follow that will almost guarantee results.

PPC Adwords is based entirely around keywords, an advertiser bids on certain keywords so that every time their ad is shown and clicked, they pay a certain their bid amount. The tricky part is choosing quality keywords that will ensure your ads are being shown to people who should be seeing them. Let us say that you are selling a book on self help, what keywords would you bid for? Some will be obvious but out of your price range, for example “self help books” might be a bit above your budget, so you have to get creative. Try to put yourself in the mind of an internet browser who is looking to buy a book on self help; would you be searching for something like “ways to be happy” or for a product like “self help book to make me happy”? Figuring out what your target market wants is essential to a successful PPC campaign.

Organic SEO

Another option for advertising online is organic SEO, this is traditionally viewed as ranking for your keywords in search engines but has also recently referred to building reputation on social networks, for now we will focus on the benefits of ranking for your keywords.

Similar to PPC advertising, establishing an organic position in search engines is dependent on keywords. You want to target and optimize your website for keywords that will bring in visitors you want to have visiting your website, i.e. visitors who want to buy your products. There are many different ways to optimize your website and begin ranking online for your keywords, fortunately most of them from building backlinks to article marketing, be creative and use the internet for research, you will have more tactics than you know what to do with before too long.

PPC advertising and organic SEO are both viable and important options, both challenging, both potentially rewarding and can both bring you visitors, invest some time learning about them today to start converting more and earning more.

Image Source: Seolair

Many small business owners have heard of the power of social media and how it can be beneficial for their business. It is indeed possible to spread the word about your business by using social networks and they are in fact one of the best tools to do so. Now what makes social marketing so great? Here are some of its unique advantages:

An large established user base.

Popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter receive millions of visitors every single day of the year. This means one simple thing: the traffic is already there. You just need to establish a presence on these sites and get users to see your materials. Among the millions of users which frequent these sites, chances are that some are looking for something that you are offering.

Lower costs.

When selecting an advertising method, something that many business owners worry about is how much it will cost to use. Many small businesses don’t have much of a budget to spend on online advertising. The fact is, creating a page about your business on social networks costs you nothing. It is completely free to use. If you want your page to look even better and be more functional there are many tools available which let you do so. Some are free, while others require that you pay a monthly fee to use them. But even the paid tools will cost you a lot less than other advertising options.

Possibility for your page to go viral.

You may have heard about the viral effect. It is when something spreads among people without intervention from whoever created it. Social networks are the ideal place if you want your page to go viral. If you make it attractive and catchy enough, people will share it with their friends, who will then share it with their friends and so on. Pages which are truly unique and interesting could receive millions of views in total.

Flexibility and opportunities for expansion.

Any social media site is constantly evolving. New features are added. New options for communicating are created. All of this means even more opportunities for you to spread the message about something that you want to promote. You get complete choice on how you structure your advertising campaigns. For example, you can either create a main page for your business, or create several different ones which will promote various products or services that you provide.

Also, new sites could appear in the near future. And these new sites could open the door for even further promotional opportunities for you. Sure, Facebook and Twitter are probably the most popular options offered right now, but who knows what will appear in 1 year or in 5 years. If a new social network appears, why not establish your presence on it right away rather than wait to determine whether it will become popular? This will allow you to stay one step ahead of the game, rather than constantly playing “catch up” with your competitors.

If you are going to place some ads online, you need to be sure that your entire ad campaign has been planned well so that you can maximize your chances of success. Here are some thing that you can do to make that happen:

Determine what your objectives are

When you promote affiliate or CPA offers, you naturally want to earn as much commissions as possible. It’s always a good thing to set certain goals for each advertising campaign that you make. How many sales / leads are you planning to get each day on each offer that you are running?

Set up a budget

If you are going to use paid advertising methods, such as pay per click ads, media buys, etc., think about how much money you will be willing to spend on each campaign per day. If you are running several ads at the same time, split up your budget accordingly, depending on what offer you want to promote in priority.

Think of the creatives that you will use

If you use text based ads, think up of some ads that will catch the attention of the reader, all while maintaining a good traffic quality. See what your competitors are doing and what their ads look like. Remember that while CTR is important, conversions are what you are after. If the offer that you are promoting requires the user to buy something, avoid using words that could make the reader think they are getting something for free. You will simply end up with hundreds of visits from freebie seekers and very little, if any, actual conversions. If you use graphic ads, set up ads using several different banners. Remember that the banner with the highest conversion rate on the network may not always be the best converting one for you.

Set up a way to track your results

Unless you are only running one campaign with one ad, having a solution to track where the most visitors and conversions are coming from is crucial to being a successful marketer. This will allow you to see exactly which ads and which keywords are the most profitable for you. There are many free scripts out there that you can install on your landing pages which can help you do just that. Even something as simple as using a different landing page for each ad copy can help you track your results.

Be prepared to make changes

While some “experts” out there claim that they have a method to make money online which is simply “set and forget”, the truth is actually different. Sure, you can simply leave things running for a few days, weeks even without optimizing or making changes. But remember that the whole “online business” industry is rapidly evolving. Therefore, you need to monitor your results on a daily basis, and make adjustments such as changing your landing pages, removing keywords that are not profitable, changing you ad copy a bit, etc.

When you are thinking of starting an online business, it is important that you prepare yourself, just like you would when you start a “brick and mortar” business. Here are some things to do in order to make sure you are ready to begin your operations.

Think about what exactly you are going to do: There are many ways to earn cash on the internet. Which method or methods will you be using to make profits? Will you be providing services, selling physical goods, selling digital items, running a membership site or promoting affiliate offers? Of course, you don’t need to limit yourself to just one of these categories of things that you will be doing, but you need to have a rather clear cut idea of what you plan to do.

Formulate a business plan: This doesn’t have to be complicated. It would basically include elements such as what products you will sell / promote, how you will sell them, how will you advertise and what services or materials you will need. You should also formulate a budget that will detail on what you will initially spend your money.

Register your business: Depending on the jurisdiction that you are in, you will have various options. You can register a sole proprietorship or incorporate. There are various legal and tax implications depending on what form your business will have and once again these will vary from country to country and state to state. Therefore, it is always a good idea to seek advice from someone experienced in these issues, such as an attorney.

Open a business bank account: You will need one to receive payments and to deposit checks received from customers or affiliate programs.

Set up your main website: When conducting business online, you will need to own one or several different websites. If you own several sites, you should begin by creating a “main” one for your business. The good news is that web hosting and domain names are now cheaper than they have ever been before, so it will not be such a major expense.

Seek advice from others: There is a wealth of information available online on any type of activity that can be performed online. Why not take full advantage of it? You can use forums and social networking sites in order to exchange information and form partnerships or joint ventures with those that are involved in activities similar to yours. You will also get the ability to share information and experience that you have acquired along the way with others, thus helping them succeed in their online ventures as well.

Hiring outsourcers can either be an awesome experience or a complete nightmare, sadly I have been on both ends of the spectrum. Good contractors are hard to come by, but if you look in the right places you are going to have a much better chance of finding someone within budget and that is capable of doing the work to your satisfaction.

Today we are going to focus on outsourcing websites such as oDesk, Elance, and Guru.

Putting Out Jobs Requests

The first step of finding someone to do work for you is your job request. This is the most essential part and the area where you will make or break your chance at getting a good contractor.

Make sure you are extremely specific. If you want a native English speaker, make that a requirement. If you want someone for less than $5 per hour, make that a requirement. Make sure the task you are requesting to be completed is extremely detailed so that potential contractors can assess whether or not is worth their time and if so, what their price to complete the task is.

Choosing a Contractor

If you are looking for a long term contractor this is the time to really focus in on what you want and make sure the person is qualified to do what you are asking them to do. One great way to make sure you have the right person is to put 4-5 of your best candidates on a trial basis. What you do is simply ask them to do a task (for a reduced amount, say 50% of their asking price) and do part of the task like that. If they get hired you will hire them for their asking wage, if not you pay them for the work they did. This helps the hirer make sure they have the right person, and as a contractor makes them work harder to try and get the long term work.

Clear Tasks

Make sure you are very clear with the tasks you give to your contractors. From the start you need to give very clear and concise directions to your contractor. Ask them to explain back to you what you are requesting, so you can make sure they understand the task (especially if it is a long term task). Don’t be afraid to ask for changes or to send videos showing them how you want something done.

Once you have a good contractor, hang on to them and make sure they are happy. Keep the work coming for them and you will have a great working relationship.

Recently we gave you some pointers on setting up your new online business. Once you’re all set up and ready to go, then what? There are some tips you’ll need to get off to the right start with your online business, and we’re going to share them with you now.

Take It Seriously

Just because you’re working for yourself, and you’re working out of a home office, that’s no excuse to slack off, and treat your work like it’s not important. Being your own boss requires a lot of dedication, and effort. You won’t succeed if you don’t buckle down, and work hard every day, just like you would if you were working for someone else. Once your business is up and running, and everything is going smoothly, you’ll be able to take the occasional long weekend, and be a little more flexible with your schedule, but when you’re starting out, you’ll have to work hard, and spend some long days working to get your business up and running.

Goals

It’s important to set yourself some goals to keep your efforts focused, and your business on track. That being said, it’s also very important to make sure those goals are reasonable. If you set the goal of making a million dollars in your first year of business, you’re probably not going to meet that goal. Instead, try to set goals based on your current business operations, and where you see them going in the near future. Instead of setting goals that are a year off, try to set goals that are only one or two months off. That way, you’ll always have an impending goal to work toward.

Budget

Running an online business doesn’t require a huge amount of money, but you will still need to spend some cash in order to keep things running. You’re going to need web hosting, and if you intend to do any email marketing, you’re going to need an autoresponder. Beyond that, your costs are going to vary depending on your marketing methods, and your overall business plan. If you have the budget to invest in high quality services, like video production, and professional writers, your business will benefit from it in the long run. Just be careful not to overspend. There are a lot of free services out there that match the features of the paid ones. For example, if you’re looking for software to manage your social media accounts, try Tweetdeck. It helps you to keep everything in one place, and you can run multiple Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, and Foursquare accounts from within it. Spend money when you have to, but spend wisely whenever you can.

Keep these tips in mind as you start out with your new business, and things should go smoothly.

Setting up a Facebook fan page can be a great way to generate traffic for your website, but it takes a lot of time and effort. If you don’t have the spare time to work on a fan page, but you do have some room in your advertising budget, you might want to think about using Facebook ads.

Facebook has over 500 million users, and they fall into every age group and demographic you can think of. When you’re setting up your Facebook ad campaign, Facebook gives you all the tools you need to reach out to your target audience. You can use parameters like age, gender, hobbies, and interests to target your ads at the people most likely to click them. If you know who your audience is, you can reach them on Facebook with these tools.

The results of using highly targeted advertising like this are generally pretty good. The odds that each person seeing your ad will click on it are pretty good, and once they make their way to your site, they’re likely to come back as long as your content is compelling.

If you’re familiar with internet marketing and advertising, you’re probably wondering how Facebook ads stack up against Google Adwords. Well, Facebook gives you more direct control over who sees your ads. With all of the options you have at your disposal you can really narrow it down, and make the most of your ad campaign. Google Adwords still has one key advantage, your ads show up in search results. In other words, your ads show up for people who are searching terms directly related to your site. Neither service is “better” than the other, they just work differently. Keep that in mind before spending your advertising budget on either service.

With over 500 million users, Facebook is a great place to reach out to your audience. The results of a Facebook advertising campaign will depend directly on your site, it’s content, and how well you know your target audience. If you have a site with compelling content, and you know your target audience, you can get a high yield for your investment in Facebook ads.

In order for a website to be profitable, it needs visitors. The more people that see your site, the more products you’ll sell, and your ads will get clicked more frequently. There are a number of ways to bring in more traffic to your site. Let’s take a look at a few of the more effective ones.

PPC Advertising

PPC (pay per click) advertising is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Use a service like Google Adwords to create some ads, and get them out to your audience. If you’re going to go this route, it’s important to set a budget for your ads. You don’t want to spend more on advertising than you’re going make. For example, if you spend $10 per day on advertising, you should be bringing in at least that much from sales, or ad revenue.

Article Marketing

Article directories can be a great source of traffic. Just find one that represents your niche well, write a few 300 – 500 word articles every week, and post them to whatever article directories you like. Include a link to your site in each article, and over time, you’ll begin to see a solid amount of traffic coming into your site from your article marketing efforts.

Social Networking

You probably know a lot of people with Facebook and Twitter accounts. That’s because a lot of people in every demographic imaginable are using those services. Facebook alone has over 500 million users, and some of them are bound to be a part of your target audience, so setting up a Facebook page for your website is a good idea.

Spread The Word

Put a link to your site in your profile on any sites you visit frequently. If you comment on a popular blog a lot, make sure your account is linked to your site. If you post on forums a lot, make sure your site is listed in you signature. Everything you can do to spread the word about your site will help to bring in more traffic.

Each method listed above for driving traffic is simple, and effective. Aside from PPC advertising, they’re all free too. You can bring in more traffic to your site quickly, and for very little money if you know the right methods to use.