10 More Steps to Internet Success

Copyright 2006 Duane Marx

This article will go beyond the basics of starting your first internet business. You’ll be introduced to some more very useful products and services. Learn as much as you can about these and if profitable apply them to your internet business.

1) ‘Offer a Free Product’ – To get people to visit your website, sign up for your mailing list or to just make your customers happy you can offer a free product or bonus of some kind. Or give away a free product to help add value to your original product or affiliate product. Remember it always has to be valuable information and related to your product. Make sure you have links back to your website, or your affiliate sites, branded inside these free products. Then the more products you give away the more traffic you’ll generate for your website.

2) ‘Write an Article’ – One way to create a lot of links back to your site is to write an article. Just write a good article and submit it to ezines and you could have thousands of links back to your website. Give everyone permission to use your article as long as they keep it intact with your link at the bottom. And it just may spread all over the internet. Also by writing articles you will get ranked higher on the search engines because all these links will drive traffic back to your site. Now this is real free advertisement.

3) ‘Discussion Forums’ – Discussion forums are places where you can go to communicate with others about related topics. You can learn some valuable information about what people are interested in and maybe find new products to sell. If you can answer some of their questions then you can also achieve some recognition and maybe find new prospects. Be careful trying to advertise because most forums don’t allow it. But some may, so make sure you understand all the rules before self promoting. If you advertise when it’s not acceptable then you will hurt your reputation which is everything online.

4) ‘Start a Newsletter or Ezine’ – This is a good way to get a list of potential customers and establish credibility. This will be directly related to what you’re selling online so you should already know a lot about your topic. Make sure it is useful information. You can send it out weekly, monthly or whatever works best for you. Again you can put links back to your website to promote your products and your affiliate products. And to get more people to join your newsletter offer them a free product for signing up.

5) ‘Search Engines’ – Want to get free traffic? Then you will want to submit your website to search engines and try to get ranked as high as possible. The higher you get ranked the more exposure you’ll have and the more free traffic you’ll receive. About 85% of the people searching online use search engines. Do some keyword research and find good keywords that get a lot of traffic. Also try to get lots of websites linking to yours. One way is to write articles and let everyone use them on their sites.

6) ‘Mini Courses’ – Mini courses or e-courses are great ways to send valuable information to your customers. You can choose to send them out every day or every other day. They can be 3, 5, 7, 10 or 30 messages long or longer. And if your customers don’t want to wait then let them download all the messages at once. You can have links to your products inside these mini courses sending traffic back to your website. And by providing your customers with valuable information they will trust you and therefore buy more of your products.

7) ‘All in One Services’ – All in one services are companies that provide multiple services. They may include: hosting, autoresponder, website, products to sell, and promotion ideas to use. This may be an easier way to start your first internet business. But just remember you always want to have your own unique style. You want to be different so that your website and products stand out from everyone else. And if you have to pay a monthly fee for this service you may end up paying more than if you set everything up yourself.

8) ‘Sell an Affiliate Product’ – Want to make some extra money every month? Just sell someone else’s product. But you’re really not selling it at all, you’re just referring people to your affiliate’s website. So let’s see, you don’t have to have a great website, or a killer sales letter, or a system set up to collect their money. And you don’t have to ship the product. But when your referral buys the product or services then you get a commission. Usually affiliate companies will send you a check once a month. You can make up to 50% or more for each referral. Refer a $200 product and make $100. Even better refer a monthly service and get paid every month for as long as your referral stays subscribed. But make sure you only refer valuable products because you will be judged by the quality of your recommended products and services.

9) ‘Email Signature’ – Here is another way to advertise your website or product. At the bottom of your emails you can add a short message and a link to your website or to an affiliate site. So with every email you send you’ll have the opportunity to promote one of your products. You may not want to use an email signature on all your emails but you may want to try it on some of them.

10) ‘Email Advertising’ – Sending emails to your prospects and customer is a good way to make extra money. You should be collecting names and email addresses whenever you can. Whenever you come out with a new or different product you can send an email to everyone on your list. It is always easier to sell to someone that has joined your list or purchased from you in the past because they know and trust you. Because of spam filters, it’s getting harder all the time to get emails through to your prospects. And it’s a good idea to put a reminder in your emails that shows how their name got on your list. Make sure to never use spam. And have a place on the bottom of all you emails where they can opt out if they choose.

Remember to always invest in yourself. Invest your money for quality information that will help expand your business, and invest your time to thoroughly read the information.