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!