Why 98% of Failed Internet Businesses Could Have Survived If They Had Just Done 2% More Homework

For me, the best place to start an online business is to identify a niche market. Once you think you have found that niche market, half the puzzle is solved. The next important step is to ensure that there aren’t too many products and services that address that market’s need.

For example, there might be tons of software solutions available on the market geared towards a particular problem that your target market is experiencing. With all that overwhelming flood of info, it might be next to impossible to find out how best to use those software products. In such a scenario, it would be ideal to create a “how-to” guide that takes your customer by the hand and show them exactly how those software solutions work. See the sense?

Here are some critical factors to consider:

1). Look at the general price of other products/services in your area of interest. This gives you a very good idea of how price perceptive your potential market is.

2).What is the demography of your potential customers? What income level do they represent? Is there any gender bias? Where do they rank in the academic strata? Where do they live? These are relevant questions that will help you to arrive at important conclusions as to how lucrative that market will be and how to structure your message to that audience.

3). Most significantly, what motivates them to buy? An online or telephone survey or even discussion boards are good media to turn to for this fact-finding. Understand their motivation and you’ll be able to tickle their fancy!

Once this groundwork is done, then you will want to ensure that you employ the right business model for your optimum success. Some examples would include:

• The sales model: You position yourself as an online merchant and every sale turns a profit. Pretty straightforward.

• The subscription model: If you are an expert in your field with specialty knowledge and rare, desirable and useful info, this model is excellent for your internet launch. A paid subscription is ideal in this respect.

• The “click’ and mortar model where you combine an offline business with an online presence and increase exposure while expanding your market.

• Finally, the vertical portal or “vortal” (for short) model: Just think of Yahoo! And MSN and you get the picture. One entry (their front /home page) leading you to a gamut of information such as news, weather, stocks etc.
  
  

In closing, Google Adwords PPC (pay-per-click) is a great place to test and fine-tune your strategy. What is great about Google is that they virtually put you in the driver’s seat and give you the directions to reach your destination.

You have the option to run more that one campaigns concurrently, thus allowing you the flexibility to test more than one headlines and texts to see which draws more traffic. To get started only costs $5 and bids start as little as 1 cent per click. You have full control over your budget!

I wish you success!

Michael

Ever Wondered Who Created The Internet? I Think I Found Out

The internet has become such a buzz word in our modern day world to the extent
that even the unborn seem to in a hurry to get here to know what this craze is all
about. All nations and tongue, from whatever creed or ethnicity, have at one time
or another used the word internet or heard it somewhere or seen it in some
writing. This certainly must have many of us wondering who created the internet.
But did the guys who created the internet even had the foggiest idea that it would become such a global phenomenon? I think not.

Today the Internet World Stats reports that there are currently 1,114,274,426 internet
users online! Isn't that emazing? Every continent on the planet is part of this
global community with Asia taking the biggest chunk of the internet pie, devouring
a whopping 36%, followed by Europe gobbling up 29% while North America sinks its teeth in 21% of the whole. Latin America, Africa, Oceana/Austrilia and the Midle East
grapple for the remaining 14%.

Nowadays, even the seniors want a piece of the action

Take for example this 60 year old grandmother Barbara Jennings of Decorate-
Redecorate.com. Barbara has decided to turn her hobby into a profitable internet experience and through her vision she is making over $8,000 per month and was even featured in Orange Coast Magazine (June, 2005). You can learn about other like-minded
people at this link

Young people are every where on the internet. From Myspace to Ryze, Flickr to Hi5,
the internet has drawn the world together and made it a much smaller space. But like
Barbara, a younfg inner city kid by the name Jermaine Griggs has also decided to use
the internet to turn his passion into an income stream. A pianist extraordinaire, Jermaine turned his penchant into a successful $800,000 a year business teaching ordinary
people how to play the piano by ear in record time. I bet the people who created the
internet didn't see this coming.

"Ok, interesting stuff, but you sill haven't told me who created the internet" I saw that one coming (I was reading your mind, right? :))

Well, let's get the puss out of the bag, shall we?

In a BBC News interview dated Friday, March 4, 2005, captioned, "Getting The Net Off The Ground", Dr. Robert Khan, co-inventor of this mind boggling phenomenon, the internet, told the BBC, "The work that we did was principally on designing what a network would look like...but it turned out that an agency of the US government, the Defence Advance Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa (it was known as Arpa back then) actually had plans to build a computer network in the country."

Vint Cerf, the next key developer, was also featured in another BBC Click Online interview dubbed "Towards an internet in space", dated Sunday, September 19, 2004, said in his interview with the BBC, "My job was to write software for the computers that we ultimately started putting on the Arpanet in late 1969." Cerf, together with Khan, developed the communications protocol, TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)/IP (Internet Protocol), in 1974.

The internet concept was developed starting in 1964, and the first messages passed were between UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and the Stanford Research Institute in 1969. The government along with universities developed the internet as a way for scientists to share ideas and as a means to share information on defense research between involved universities and defense research facilities. It became
free-for-all for commercial use in the 1990's.

Given the complexity of the project, though, it is hard or any one person to take credit for the interenet engineering.

It is importnat to note however, that as the technology evolved, it was , Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee who later revolutionized the World Wide Web. You can get more info from Wikipedia. Berners-Lee is director of the World Wide Web Consortium.

I think this should give you a fair appreciation of who created the internet although,
as said earlier, there were different contributors at various points in its evolution, but the key players are the ones highlighted above.

Personally, I am very excited that the internet is free to all as this opens a flood-gate of opportunities never thought possible before those geniuses who created the internet came about with this huge global dynamo!

Until I share more of my thoughts with you, take care!

Jamaica: The Caribbean Paradise

This is a captivating picturesque of the most beautiful Caribbean island on the Caribbean canvas: my Jamaica. Come home to captivating tranquility and irresistible beauty

Get the E in business success using FREE search engine optimization and explode your web site traffic overnight!

As you will agree, running a home based business takes some degree of dedication and commitment. There are some very critical “know-hows” that you must get the hang of as soon as your’e in business online. Anything from as simple as running an email campaign to as complex as getting the top ten ranking on Google search engine takes into focus some vital insight to avoid becoming the next internet marketing casualty. If you can as much as turn on your computer and check your email, then y o u a r e in business.

But did you know that using organic and paid search engine e in business marketing can explode your web site traffic overnight!Literally!

First, let’s familiarize ourselves with a few frequently used terms used by webmasters.

The two often repeated terms around the SEO circles are “first-time visitors and “repeat visitors”. Fairly self-explanatory, right?

Ok, now, believe it or not, according to Search Engine Journal (a web site that focuses on Search Engine News on SEO & Search Marketing) after checking our email, searching the World Wide Web is the next reason we come online! Mmmm, interesting fact.

People come online for all sorts of reasons. For example, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project, “60 million Americans say that the internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives.” They also say that 73% of adult Americans are either shopping, pursuing hobbies or engaging in personal interest online.

According to Internet World Stats, the worldwide internet community has reached a staggering 1 billion users! Whew! that looks like the whole Indian population.

Here’s a breakout:

• Asia 400 Million (36%)

• Europe 300 Million (28%)

• North America 200 Million (21%)

• Latin America/Caribbean 100 Million (9%)

• Africa accounts for 30 Million (3%)

• Middle East 20 Million (2%)

• Oceania/Australia 18 Million (1.8%)

With that kind of statistics above, are you now seeing what your bank account would look like if your were sitting right at the top 10 search results to meet these internet users with some solution to their problem? I think you got the picture now.

Ok, let us now see which major search engines are commonly used by our 1 billion users. Google is by far the search authority. In fact, these days Google has become the search mecca on the internet as everybody likes to ‘google’ their way to finding answers on the online. Yahoo! boasts second place followed of course by MSN with its new search page. The long and short is that Google out-class both competitors by leaps and bounds.

So how do I go about getting a traffic jam at my web site?

Well, this is where you have to prepare for some dedication and commitment I mentioned earlier in my preamble. Don’t panic here; if you can follow simple instructions and carry them out well, you are on track. A great place to begin this exciting adventure is by using Wordtracker to do great keyword research. Keywords are basically the words you would type into the Google search engine to find for instance, “great caribbean packages” where that exact phrase is your keyword to find just that, “great vacation packages”. Pretty simple, right? I love this amazing tool. It’s more that just merely a wordtracker. it’s a powerful research tool.

BUT, bear in mind that millions of websites are online fiercely competing for top spots using, as mentioned earlier, organic and paid search engin e in business marketing optimization, which means that you would have to find the most competitive keyword/s in your niche area to launch an all out attack and land your web site among the top 10 rankings.

There are three main strategies for competing consistently at the top 10 position.

They include:

1) Placing your best keywords at strategic positions on your web page. Hint: your web site address is a great place to start and putting h1/h around your title is will bribe the “spider” to take a closer look at your keword.

2) Giving the search engine ‘crawlers’ or ’spiders’ one of their favourite meals to come hunt you down. By this I am referring to something as simple and yet effective as adding your web site to relevant directories such as dmoz.org for example.

3) Building an empire of relevant inbound links (links pointing from other sites back to your site) is a smart way to go. Think about writing content rich articles for your audience as one great way to do this. Articlemarketer.com, ideamarketers.com are greet places to publish articles, among many others of course.

Pay-per-click or Sponsored search engines optimization can significantly enhance your internet success, but, if used foolishly, they can dry up your bank account! No kidding, pay-per-click campaigns can either leave you whistling all the way to the bank or making an appointment with your mortgagor to consider refinancing your loan! Ok,
that’s taking it a bit too far but there are dos and don’ts critical to your success.

Like anything else, you have to first determine a budget. Would you jump in your car/truck, drive to the supermarket, grab the biggest trolley, pack it navel high without first ensuring that you have enough funds to pay for the goods. So, how do you determine your pay-per-click budget? Not that difficult at all. A nice place to strt testing your ad with a mini budget is http://kanoodle.com.

I won’t bother to burden you with that ‘next big thing’ here and now. Instead, I will give you some time to digest the foregoing and continue from here another time. In the meantime, take it from the expert, your can surviv e in business if you make up your mind to hang in there and copy the exact strategies the online gurus have used to
capitalize on the E in business.

(Oh by E I mean extras of course!)

(Please feel free to use this article leaving the biography and byline as is in your ezines, email campaigns etc,. Please put yourself ‘in the other man’s shoes’ and observe Copright © protocols)

Michael Roache is an ordinary guy committed to home based business success and currently helping ordinary people to get their internet based home business from ground zero using a 100% tested and proven system that pulls traffic in the thousands daily. To get more cutting edge info on how you can start attracting swarms of free traffic hits click here

Your Blog Could Be A Goldmine and You Don't Know

You know, I was surprised recently to discover that the blogosphere was such MASSIVE online community. I was fascinated to find out that 57 million American adults, or 39% of the online population, are active blog readers, according to Pew Internet.

Now look at what Edelman found out about the reading pattern of these blog readers:

A staggering 27% or 15 million of American readers read blogs at least once per week, compared with 74% of Japanese readers, 43% in South Korea, 23% in the UK and 22% in France. Then I turned to Internet World Stat for a helping hand to determine how many persons these percentages reflect and came up with a mind boggling 110 million blog readers per week!

That's huge!

I get pretty excited when looking at survey data like these because it's like navigating the globe in minutes via something like Google Earth.

As I scrutinized the Pew survey more carefully, I noticed that the number one reason why 76% of bloggers blogged was to share their life experiences. But while this is so, only 7% blog to make money online while 28% blog to entertain their readers and this I find a bit disturbing. Why? Because according to Jupiter Research/Ipsos-Insight Entertainment and Media, there is an enormous appetite for content by video-on-demand users.

Here's what their stats reveal. 39% of VoD (Video-on-Demand) users said they were interested in watching video online, to which 28% of movie-goers and 26% of in-store video renters agreed. Let's do a close analysis of these data. As I said in previous paragraph, only 28% of bloggers present entertainment content and 7% blog to make money, making the total 35%, right?

Ok, now when we add the percentages of those who are interested to watch online video, we get 93% and if my basic business knowledge is right, that means demand exceeds supply and that for me spells opportunity.

Battlestar Gallactica Blog, authored by George Christodoulou, provides a cool TV guide for his readership seeking to access TV episodes in a structured and funny manner. Battlestar Gallactica seems to be the favourite of many.

No kidding, bloggers spend a lot of money online too. You'll be surprised to know that of the 17,159 blog readers surveyed by Blogads, 50% spend more than $50 on ebooks; 67% clicked on a blog ad; 47% spent more than $500 online for plane tickets; 50% have contributed more than $50 to a cause or candidate online and 22.3% indicated that they purchased a product or service.

My final thoughts on the subject is that the blogosphere is a minefield with the potential to impact the entertainment, political, journalistic and business landscapes after only coming into mainstream a couple years ago. It is pretty young as well in terms of the age of bloggers as 54% are under 30 years (Pew) and the statistical parity between men and women is 54/46% respectively.

These bloggers are high income earners too, because according to Blogads, 40% have an annual household income of $90,000 or higher, while 75% earn over $45,000, and as I said earlier, 47% of bloggers spend over $500.

I'm sure that looking at the above stats, especially the aspect that shows just how willing bloggers and blog readers are to spend money online, you might be asking how you could capitalize on this enormous opportunity.

I would recommend that you take a close look at Blogging For Dollars put together by Derek Gehl and the Internet Market Center. The easy-to-follow guide will show you just how you can get free traffic hits and generate lots of traffic using your blog.

Until next time,

Chao

The Raw Truth About "Phishing": Spotting The Phishing Hook!

Phishing? What on earth is that! Was that a misspelling?
Well, actually, no. Phishing is one of the latest internet
phenomenon in which some criminal out there in cyper-
space creates a "photocopy" website of a genuine one
and lures his victim into volunteering sensitive personal
info, convinced he is actually on the legitimate website.

Let's look at a classic example. I repeatedly see emails
popping up in my bulk folder claiming that Paypal has
identified an attempted fraud on my account. It then goes
on to say that it is critical that I log into my account via
link provided and change my personal details, making
sure to stress that urgency of the change to avert further
compromise.

Now here's the catch. After you unsuspectingly enter
your password and other sensitive data, the phishing
website then captures your password and all your
personal particulars and what do you know: you just
got hooked! You are suddenly no longer the only
"authorized" person who has access to your account.

There is also the "telephone phisher" who calls and
claims to be a customer service agent of Visacard
or Mastercard. He will claim that there has been some
fraudulent activity on your credit card, already having,
in this scenario, your card number, but trying to phish
your CVC (card verification code-last three numbers
on the reverse of your card).

According to a case study released last November by
Gartner Inc., of the 5000 adults who took theeir online
survey in August, the average loss per phishing victim
nearly quintupled from $257 in 2005 to $1,244 in 2006.

Pretty frightening eh.

To compound this problem, only 54% were able to
recover in 2006 compared to 80% in 2005, due largely
to a change in tactics by the scammers. While financial
institutions remain prime targets, less traditional brands
such as fictitious sweepstake contest are being employed.

Ebay and Paypal Are Primary Phishing Tanks

According to The Register, a number of Bank of Ireland
customers had lost €113,000 through a fraudulent email
scam. One customer is believed to have lost €49,000 after
responding to a fake email, while other clients lost between
€5,000 and €16,900. They have even conceded to compenate
some of it's customers who together lost some €160,000,
according to Irish Independent.

Gartner Inc. say that Ebay and Paypal are the top phishing
targets., a release corroborated by Phishtank, a community-
based anti-phishing network. Phishtank goes on the say that
some 1,493 distinct scam sites impersonated PayPal last
October alone, with another 1,210 phishing sites targeting
eBay.

Because of my online experience, I have a keen sense of
scamming tactics and was able to avert an attempted attack
on my identity. Using a Paypal website "image" the phisher
tried to get me to login under the guise that my Paypal account
has been compromised. I forward the email to Paypal and they
justified my suspicions.

PayPal will never send you an email with the greeting "Dear
PayPal User" or "Dear PayPal Member". Emails initiated by
PayPal will address you by your first and last name, or the
business name associated with your PayPal account.

For security purposes, PayPal will never ask you to re-enter
your full bank account, credit, or debit card number without
providing you with at least the last two digits of the nuimber.

Look Out! A 'Next Generation' Phishing Strategy Is On The Rise

Have you heard about the DIY man-in-the-middle phishing kits?
Well, if not, hold on to your chair because this one is out
and bad. If you are a seasoned webmaster, pay close
attention to this breaking news.

Security experts at RSA Security reveal that the so-called
"universal phishing kit" allows fraudsters to configure attacks
for any target web site without the need for customisation and
add that once fraudsters acquire and operate this kit, an
attack can be configured to "import" pages from any target
Web site.

The kit creates a fake URL that communicates with
both the end user and a legitimate company web site.
Spam e-mail is used to trick customers into entering
account data at the bogus site, which phishes account
details and multi-factor authentication information.

This data is then autmatically forward to the legitimate
site to access accounts. Any data submitted to the site after
the victim has logged into their account can also be stolen.

I know the above info can be a bit scary but don't throw
your hands in the air and destroy your credit card, I have
a few things to share with you on how you can help to
hook the phisher.

Firstly, once you "smell" a phishing bait, don't hide, tell it.
Go to Castlecops at http://www.castlecops.com/pirt and
paste in full email source of phish. Castecops and Sunbelt
Software have teamed up to launch a global phishing
termination operation through a volunteer PIRT (Phishing
Incident Reporting Termination) squad, funded by Castecops.

Your report is then fed to more than 50 organisations across
the web including Fraud Watch Int'l, Internet Crime Com-
plaint Center, (IC3)Korea Internet Security Center etc.

Observe the following do’s and don’ts:

>Do not click on the link in an email that asks for
your personal information.

>Do look for "https" and a padlock on a site
that requests personal information.

>Do pay attention to your statements

>Don’t download attachments, software updates
or any application to your computer via a link
you received in an email.

>Do report any suspected phishing activity to
CastleCops at http://www.castlecops.com/pirt

That’s my 2 cents for today. I hope I have helped
to make you more aware of those phishing baits around
you while you swim in the cyber ocean.

Swim carefully!

Michael

Drive Thousands of Visitors to your Website Through Social Networking at Zero Cost!

I'm just curious: Have you launched your blog yet? If not, you will
be excited to start one after your read below.

2005 could be dubbed the "blog year" as thousands of blogs
sprung up all over the internet. Check Technorati. They are now
tracking some 57.4 million blogs. That's 64% more than the number
as at November 2005!

Now what is this blog all about? Well, Blogs (short for "weblogs") are a
simple way for anyone to post fresh content in an easy-to-read web
site format with the newest information always on top.
Blogs are also referred to as Web2.0 in some circles.

Blogs are very easy to set up and maintain.
You can even post via e-mail to some blogs in pretty much
the same way to would send an ordinary email, using a blog email
address. Some folks go on a posting blitz daily because of the ease
and simplicity of blogging.

Did you know that ordinary online businesses are blogging their
way to internet success?

Yeah! search engine spiders love crawling through blogs
given their "freshness" and this boosts your search engine ranking,
increase your traffic, and improve your credibility -- what's the sum total
of all of this? You guessed it...more sales of course!

With a well-written blog, it's easy to establish yourself and if you
blog about a specific subject, like your industry or hobby, people
interested in that topic will visit your blog and read it often.

What you just read in the above paragraph is what is called
social networking ultimately leading to more customers. Visitors will,
without obligation, link to your web site overtime as you gain more
popularity.

A word of caution though: It takes time to build trust. People must
"feel" you as a real person through your writing and this can take
a little while. No need to worry however. Here are a few tips to
sort of "fast track" your progress:

When writing your blog make your info "sticky" and of good quality.
By "sticky" I mean writing in such a way that your reader keeps coming
back for more.

Try to keep material original. They get more attention than links to
news and other blogs. Remember, you want to connect to your
audience and build trust.

Now this can be a bit challenging but keeping content updated and
topical is important. Let's say you have a seminar coming up in your area
on Forex trading in December and you wish to invite your readers.

Posting this info to your blog would be best at least a week before the
event. Why? because it gives search engines ample time to crawl
your blog so that folks will see your invitation ahead of time and not
days after the event has passed.

Ok, let's see...we could leave it here for now.

However, before I run, I'd like to encourage you to make sure you direct
your traffic to a "lead capture page". What is this? Simply put, a
gateway page that your visitor is prompted to put in his/her
name, email address and possibly telephone number. That's
how I do it.

Until I talk with you again, (in Jamaican parlance I would say
: "Until mi talk wid yu again")

Prosper and stay in good health,

Michael