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!

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