Many people dream of starting a home based business – today, there is nothing stopping you but you. Anyone with a web connection, a plan, and the drive and talent to follow it through can be a successful entrepreneur.

The hardest part is getting started. Here, in condensed form, are the things you need to do to get things moving.

1. Write a business plan. Every business needs a plan, but because internet businesses are often not anchored by real-life objects like stores, it’s especially important when starting online home based businesses. Your business plan needs to include market research, an assessment of other businesses that do things similar to what you’re offering, an outline of who your anticipated customers are, and your financial goals.

It is essential that your business plan includes a clear set of actions to generate steady traffic. This is a special, yet essential part of online business success.

2. Build your online storefront. This is more involved than just a web page. This storefront should have: a. your business home page – about you, what you sell, a portal to what you’re selling, and all the other stuff you would normally put on a business home page. b. something to keep your customers at your site: a squeeze page, a fun survey, games, free downloads, great pictures, consumer reviews, an online community – you get the idea. You need to offer your customers goodies for their time. You will be rewarded with their trust and patronage. c. Forums will allow customers to interact with you and each other. They can ask questions, get answers and state opinions. You can offer them a discount coupon, offer a free report in exchange for signing up for your mailing list. You’ll want some kind of feedback mechanism so that you can get to know your customers.

3. Write a sales plan. A sales plan can be very complex, taking into account every step to success or simple like an online sales letter outlining what you sell. Most people when starting go with the simpler sales page; however, which ever you decide, you need to get the piece right, so make sure you do some research before you start building.

4. Test you system. Ask for feedback about what’s good and what’s not on your sales page. Look at it critically yourself. The biggest sales stopper for new online businesses is sales copy with problem. It could be as simple as the copy is boring. It doesn’t grab the reader or give them an incentive to read past the headline. Have your friends and relatives read and test the sales copy, then tweak it and have them do it again. After you think it’s the best it can be and you have a stable system, test it from time to time and every time you make a change just to make sure it continues to work.

5. Build profits. Once your business is online and working, build your product line, focusing on back-end products (the ones you don’t show on the front page) and selling your current customers more of your proven products. This is where your business really grows. You can’t count on new customers continuing to flow in, but you can count on the old ones who love what you offer to keep coming back. That’s why you gathered data about them, gave them free stuff, and maybe even built a community for them to play in.

6. Revisit these steps periodically. The web is a changing, evolving entity. It is different from day to day and hard to keep up with. You will need to keep up with progress while tweaking your own goals to stay on top of you niche market.

This sounds like a lot of work, but look at it this way: you won’t be buying suits, commuting to work, or going to lunch with people you only tolerate. No more business meetings! No more voice mail! And no more answering to the boss who knows less than you! In the end, it’s all worth it.

Learn tips for marketing an online business, or how to start a home based internet business. Visit the website marketing tips blog at http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog

- Kale McClelland

Popularity: 5% [?]

A press release can be a vital part of your company’s advertising strategy, both on and off of the web. A press release which provides useful information in a manner which makes it a pleasure to read will bring traffic to your website or bricks-an-mortar business like no other kind of advertising can. Any company, whether a new start up or an established larger firm, can benefit greatly form the attention a press release can bring. It may in fact be precisely the thing that your company needs to build business.

A press release is a piece of copy that you will give to various media about your business. It might be about a new product that you have that you feel will revolutionize your industry, or it might simply be about something newsworthy that you think they are willing to run. If your press release interests them enough, they will run it, and you might even find that you will get a chance to be interested about it. The key is to make sure that your press release is something that they feel will get them viewers or readers as well.

There is a wide range of media outlets to whom you can pitch your press releases; newspapers, radio, television stations, magazines and of course websites. You will need to properly format your press release. There is a format to which press releases are expected to conform, and yours must follow this. Don’t be shy about asking the people to whom you will submit your press release about what kind of format is expected by their organization. An improperly formatted press release will often be discarded – hardly the result you want from your hard work.

A press release is not simply an advertisement. This must be newsworthy, or your press release will not see the light of day. Give the media outlets a reason to run this as a story. For instance, an event sponsored by your firm would be a good angle, as would perhaps an award received by your firm. An advertisement disguised as a press release however, will not be run. Don’t make this mistake; a sales pitch has no place in a press release.

Remember that your press release should instruct the media venue in question when you want it to run, the headline, your contact information and a two sentence summary. This is usually followed by the content, and your content should start by putting the most important information at the very top, with corroborating information below. This format makes it easier for the news team to cut it if they are running short on time.

Take advantage of the news media in your area and make sure that your community is aware of what you are doing and what you can do for them; many businesses have found that this is an excellent way to build links throughout the community and to better their client base, and you can use this to your advantage as well!

Learn tips for marketing an online business, or how to start a home based internet business. Visit the website marketing tips blog at http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog

- Kale McClelland

Popularity: 5% [?]

“If you build it, they will come.”

Can you say Hogwash! That magic only works in the movies, and no matter how wonderful your website, if you don’t take a few basic steps, it will just sit there and gather virtual dust. The only way to get traffic to your site is by learning the basics of website promotion. Online promotion is totally different that traditional promotion, but if you can grasp and use the secrets, a line of virtual headlights will be heading towards your field.

1. SEO is the starting point. SEO or search engine optimization is the core of any good website promotion plan. SEO involves using keywords which are words that are part of an article on a webpage that are specific in describing what is on eht page. There should be inbound or incoming links from relevant sources, and URL submission to the major search engines like Google and Yahoo to let them and the world know that your site exists.

2. Social networking sites need to be visited to create relationship with like minded individuals. These communities have become a huge part of getting inbound links, building credibility and networking with people in your field. Many of the social networking places include familiar names: Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, MyBlogLog and the like, which are community forums that will highlight and introduce your website and it’s products and services to the world. These posts should be themed, not random or you’ll rapidly build negative credibility for spamming. There really is no need nowadays, because social networking is so easy and it’s fun.

3. Write articles and give them away. Seriously. A good article given away for free stands a fair chance of being reproduced on multiple websites. The trick: your articles should each end with a resource box containing a little about you, and good anchor text with a link back to your site. More free links, more potential customers.

4. Write ebooks and give them away. The power of giving away ebooks was one of the first things discovered by online viral marketers. You won’t get inbound links in most cases, as search engines don’t normally spider ebooks; however, a good book will be shared over and over. On every page, insert your website address in a discrete part of the header or footer. Readers will know where to come for more information.

5. Get other sites to link to you. This is usually done with the free article trick, but you can offer hordes of other free goodies: ebooks, online tools, free software downloads. You may also be able to guest blog for someone with good traffic, or just pay them to run your link somewhere on their site. Just make sure their Google rank is high before you spend all that time and money.

6. Giveaway free services, recipes, calorie counters, charts and exercise kits and reports. Free content and tips are always appreciated and used. If they can post it on their site, so much the better. Ask yourself, what can you offer for free in your niche?

7. Create an affiliate program. Affiliates are like your salesman and cheerleaders. They get a percentage of each sale they make, each referral gives them a little. You, in turn, make more sales and they will do promotion for you.

8. Contests and games are real winners. There are tons of contest clearing sites. If you let them know you have a contest, they will link back to you. Come up with a prize related to your niche so that the traffic that arrives to sign up, will be interested in what you have to sell.

There are plenty of other ways to generate traffic for your site, but this will get you started. Remember, if you ADVERTISE it, they will come. And come. And come.

Learn tips for marketing an online business, or how to start a home based internet business. Visit the website marketing tips blog at http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog

- Kale McClelland

Popularity: 3% [?]

Copywriting is the art of creating clear nonfiction prose for specific business and communications purposes – like advertising, sales copy, press releases, and similar items. Much of the writing you’ll find online is simply copywriting that has been adapted to the special needs of the Internet.

For the best web copywriting, follow these guidelines.

1. Have a keyword phrase in mind. Without knowing exactly what you want the search engines to target, you don’t even have a plan. Everything else hinges upon this critical phrase.

2. The title can make or break you. Your title needs to contain your keyword or keyword phrase first. An example of this would be: Widgets: Everything You Wanted To Know About Widgets. Note that the word Widgets is the first thing the search engine spider will fine. It will expect that the rest of the article to revolve around your keyword.

3. Write a great short description for the metatag. Sure, metatags aren’t used anymore for listing placement, but they are used in determining what your page is really about and to insert a description for many different search engines. Your description metatag must contain the keyword phrase, and give a short (less than 20 words or two text lines) introduction of your article.

4. Clarity in writing is necessary. Short paragraphs with clear, concise sentences is vital for a good web presentation. Jakob Nielsen, the usability guru, stated a long time ago that looking at computer screens can be maintained by people for short periods of time. It is not like reading a book. He suggested that paragraphs be kept to about three or four sentences and that sentences be simple in structure. Bullet lists are very popular on the web.

If you find that you are writing long paragraphs, stop and make them shorter. The same thing applies to sentences.

5. The greatest copywriting book ever, Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, says it all in Rule #13: Omit needless words. Online, people want the facts. Get to them. Don’t try to be artsy, and don’t write a bunch of fluff.

Come to think of it, S&W is a perfect reference for style in web copywriting. Read it. You can find a free copy at Bartleby.com.

6. Standard rules of grammar and spelling apply. No kittehspeak, no hacker, no text shorthand. Proofread everything, preferably reading backward line by line to catch all your errors, and for goodness sakes spellcheck. You’ll probably have an occasional mistake, but minimize them by editing well.

7. Use the journalistic inverted pyramid structure. People do not read to the end online. They read the beginning and skim the rest. (The skimming habit, by the way, is why Nielsen recommends lots of bullets and numbers – very skimmable.) If you start with the most important chunk and work downward to the least important details, you’ll be able to communicate the core of your work to your reader.

8. With sales copy, start with a compelling question that will encourage the person to keep reading. Get the benefits of continuing out there first, because you must capture their attention in about 30 seconds maximum. Fiction writers employ the teaser – asking a question that they don’t answer until the very end. It works. Present a problem, then write to lead up to the conclusion which solves it. Remember, though, to get the problem and enough facts in before the skimming starts. Many visitors will read the beginning, skim a bit and go to the end.

Learn tips for marketing an online business, or how to start a home based internet business. Visit the website marketing tips blog at http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog

- Kale McClelland

Popularity: 3% [?]

Buzz started back in 2004 at the O’Reilly Media Conference about the Web 2.0. Now, more than three years later, it’s one of the most misunderstood terms out there. It’s often used to describe social bookmarking sites, interactive forums, and blogs. This is only half right. The problem is, like the web itself, Web 2.0 is an amorphous and ever-changing concept.

In essence, Web 2.0 is the use of the web as a 2-way communication tool, a way for the readers or consumers of a site to contribute to the site. The best example I’ve seen is the comparison of Britannica Online and Wikipedia. Britannica is a static resource, viewed as both comprehensive and authoritative because it is written by authorities and is unchangeable. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is the opposite of static. It must be manually stopped to prevent changes, and not only is it user-generated, it is also user-changed. One would anticipate this makes Wikipedia a lesser reference source.

In truth, however, Wikipedia is a better reference source than Britannica – not because the articles are more accurate, but rather because they direct the reader toward a variety of other resources, representing a multitude of viewpoints and not just the one of the single initial author. This is immensely powerful.

Web 2.0 is an evolution of that idea, the concept of harnessing the knowledge of users globally to create comprehensive, ever changing repositories that would beyond the capabilities of a single author. The building of this wealth of knowledge takes the form of a virtual conversation which Google utilizes to target advertising that is relevant to the topic on the page. The older DoubleClick system would simply display ads without considering the content on the page.

But how can these concepts help you, the online marketing professional?

Primarily by showing you that you must change the way you think about the Internet. No longer is it a place where you can trap an audience on a website and proselytize to them. Instead, the new way to capture and retain a potential customer is by engaging them with your content, your tools, and your media. Allow customers to have a voice on your site, and you begin to create community.

This can be as simple as implementing a blog with comments that you the writer reply to, or as complex as creating your own new application – interactive games, uploadable media, public customer tips. Don’t make the mistake of looking at this as user-generated content; instead, create compelling content that your users want to add to. Ideally, you want the Mona Lisa on your site – with watercolors and markers available so your customers can make their own doodles to finish it out.

If your small business doesn’t possess the resources to create this level of complexity, there are other options. Join an existing community in your niche and lend your expertise to the group. Add a compelling signature to your profile that will be posted on every comment and bit of advice you give. Then participate – answer questions, give tips and advice but don’t advertise. If people like you, respect you and you add genuine value to the conversation, they will naturally find their way to your website. Web 2.0 has created a give and take on the Internet which has forever changed what is expected for business success. It is new, different and most of all, a lot of fun.

Learn tips for marketing an online business, or how to start a home based internet business. Visit the website marketing tips blog at http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog

- Kale McClelland

Popularity: 3% [?]

The term ‘article marketing’ is new to many people. Advertising and marketing has changed drastically since the web has moved from its origins to what is now known as Web 2.0. Writing a variety of articles instead of using traditional advertising techniques has become the norm for many business websites all over the Internet.

It can actually be quite diverting to compose copy for article marketing purposes, especially if you are engaged with the subject you are writing about. Then you can put the finished copy to work making money for you. Money is always nice to have since it facilitates all sorts of things you’d like to do.

It isn’t hard to write articles that will be used for article marketing. Knowledge of your topic and an imaginative take on it will help you to write unique articles. Because everybody is different, it is easy for anyone to come up with a distinctive article about their favorite topics. It will be even easier if you are passionate about your business.

Unique content is what article marketing is all about. Without new and different takes on various subjects, there is no intriguing reason for new people to visit a site. It is the attention grabbing words that provoke some kind of emotion from your visitors that will make them more likely to buy your products.

To achieve this, one should be sure in include useful information and titles that will draw readers. Once a person is visiting your site the job is half complete. Web surfers tend to be in a hurry and want information without being required to sift through other information that does not interest them. Articles should strive to provide readers with everything they need to know in a concise manner.

You can actually enjoy doing article marketing. When you compose copy on a variety of subjects, you broaden your active vocabulary as well as your store of information. You also gain greater expertise on any subject you write about. All that can bring in more money when you convince your readers that you are knowledgeable in your area.

Unique content is what article marketing is all about. Without new and different takes on various subjects, there is no intriguing reason for new people to visit a site. It is the attention grabbing words that provoke some kind of emotion from your visitors that will make them more likely to buy your products. Knowledge of your topic and an imaginative take on it will help you to write unique articles. Because everybody is different, it is easy for anyone to come up with a distinctive article about their favorite topics. It will be even easier if you are passionate about your business.

- Shawn Montgomery

Popularity: 4% [?]

Pay Per Click marketing services are widely known as probably the most popular method of advertising on the Web. Many webmasters have benefited from it. It’s a very inexpensive method, yet creates a considerable traffic flow to your website.

There are many other positive features of this form of advertising as you’ll see mentioned below:

A nearly immediate increase in traffic and thusly, new customers for you and your website. Potential buyers are made aware of your firm, which will drive many to visit your site. Because of the way keywords work, those who click through to your site will be those already interested in the product or service you offer. Again, every visitor brought in this way is a potential buyer.

The concept of Pay Per Click services is not difficult to grasp. You will have to bid for your spot on the search engine’s list of results. The higher the bid, the better the bidder’s advertisement position. The highest bidder gets the top spot. The next best goes to the second highest bidder and it goes on.

Flexibility. With Pay Per Click advertising, changes can be made to your advertisements any time you like. Rather than having to go through the entire process of conception, draft after draft of copy and design and so on that you would have to face with traditional advertising services, you can change the face of your campaign by merely changing the keywords you use. It’s really as simple as that!

In the Pay Per Click advertising format, everything you do, even the price you’re willing to pay, is under your control. You get to bid however much you want to pay for your keywords. But the best part is; only when someone clicks on your ad will you have to pay! If no one clicks, you don’t need to pay. So you can budget out your expenses and set your account accordingly. It’s really simple to understand and flexible enough to fit into the tightest budget plan.

And since the only clicks you’ll get are from those already interested in what you’re selling, each click is much more likely to net you a sale. Compare this with the success rate of say, circulars placed in local newspapers.

Pay Per Click advertising is the best solution for small or medium enterprises looking to compete with bigger names in the business. If you can set your parameters correctly, your ad can get a better position than even those from giant MNC’s. It levels out the competition and gives the more modest players an equal chance to compete for the customer’s attention.

This mode of advertising is perfect for someone looking for a customizable, user-friendly but efficient method of drawing the attention of a targeted audience to your product or service. Your advertisement is bound to translate into a good amount of income from sales as it will reach your preferred client base only.

If you have an e-commerce site, Pay Per Click can net your business a healthy return on a very small investment in advertising before you know it.

Marketing on the internet is not as difficult as you may think. Find legitimate ways to make money online, or how to increase your website traffic at http://www.nitromarketing.com/blog

- Kale McClelland

Popularity: 4% [?]

Article marketing is an advertising technique. An engaging article is used to hook the reader, and provide basic information and education. The articles are succinct and quickly pull the reader in. By providing the reader with a start, they can help the reader to locate additional information and services of interest to them. Article marketing is a new but powerful approach to business.

At the same time that this is going on with the reader, the article is flagging the internet spiders by using tactical placement of keywords. These keywords, if placed correctly, will help a particular site rank higher in internet searches while avoiding the look of purposeful keyword placement.

It can be a great help to you and your business if you write at least one such article a day. You can add each new article to your page in order to boost your search engine ratings. This is the beauty of article marketing. Without too much work, you are able to bring people to your site and sound very authoritative at the same time.

The most important thing to remember when you are going to use article marketing for your website is that you must use unique articles each time you post something new. Copies of articles and anything that is not unique content will not help you gain a higher rating or customer base. Customers do not want to see the same old thing everywhere that they look.

To this end, it is important to create a new and fresh article each day. This will keep your old readers interested and will make your business look experienced to your new readers. The more people that are interested in your articles, the more likely you are to sell more products. In the end, you gain profit.

As a growing area of marketing nowadays, the use of articles is a highly successful approach to selling products or services. Be sure to publish fresh ideas which haven’t been published elsewhere online. Doing this will enable you both to realize a profit and increase your rating in the popular search engines with a minimum of effort.

Article marketing is one way that businesses can advertise their goods and services. You need an engaging article that provides information to the reader. These articles use placement of words to hold the reader while flagging the internet search engines. Writing an article a day is the best way to accomplish this. You must have unique articles that can’t be found elsewhere on the internet. Unique content is the only way to participate in this kind of marketing. Use this kind of marketing on your site to gain search engine ratings and customers, which in turn brings in profit.

- Shawn Montgomery

Popularity: 4% [?]