Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

If the article’s title has led you to an assumption that I have an ultimate “formula” for complete evaluation of Website performance you are unfortunately very far from the truth. In fact such formula does not even exist! There are many different factors that are to be taken into account when assessing Website performance. All I am trying to do in this article is to provide a brief explanation of the main aspects of the Website performance that companies need to concentrate on in order to measure effectiveness of their efforts on the Net.

When my clients ask me to examine their Web sites and give them a complete health-check I usually focus on the on the following 4 factors:

• Informational Content

• Design

• Functionality

• Value Added

Informational Content

Informational content of the Web sites plays a very important role in conveying the company’s messages to its customers. Commercial Websites should contain information that the visitors may find useful in their exploits to get to know the company better. If you are buying online from a company you have never heard of before, you would certainly want to make sure that you are dealing with a legitimate reputable business rather than with a group of tricksters who will take your money and disappear in the direction unknown to you. The Website should inform the visitors about the company’s background, latest news, products and services offered and excellency awards achieved.

Not every commercial Website is providing customers with an opportunity to make purchases online. Quite a few sites are focusing on the marketing function and they view their online presence as a support network for their existing sales and distribution channels. Whether you are selling online or simply using the marketing capacity of the Web, you need to provide your customers with sufficient information not only about the company itself but also about characteristics of the products/services offered. Consumers need to know what your products are fit for, price, availability, unique characteristics and (of course!) special offers that they can take advantage of.

Do not hesitate to incorporate some seemingly “useless” stuff such as jokes, puzzles, contests into your site’ informational content. It will help you to attract greater numbers of “accidental” visitors. Chances are you will be able to gradually convert some of these visitors into becoming your loyal customers.

Design

Our life consists of experiences. Make a visit to your Website a nice one! If you are not a professional developer, do not adopt “do-it-yourself” approach. You will be better of outsourcing services of a competent Website designer. Time of home made half-baked Websites is gone. Consumers are expecting sites that are easy to navigate, use good color combinations and contain more than mere text. While pictures and animation are becoming integral elements of Website design, try not to overdo it.
I can think of many sites for respected companies that have been flooded with animations. Designing a good site is not just about displaying a lot of artwork and flashiness. After all, you are not in business of selling cartoons. The role of the artwork is simply to increase the appeal of your site.

Functionality

The fanciness of your Website is if it does not work properly. Try to think from a consumer’s perspective. How often have you been frustrated by defective links, faulty catalogues and failure to log into your account? Unfortunately with many small and medium-sized companies, these problems are quite common. They can usually be attributed not to lack of the technical expertise but to enormous hurry to get the Website up and running.

If your Website is “sort of complete” and ” kind of ready for upload”, hold your horses! It is unprofessional to place an unfinished product on the market. It is true, that time is money but it is better to wait till your Website development project is 100% complete. Make sure that you test every single feature and function of your site prior to uploading. Do not take it for granted that applications or code that were fully functional at the time of initial installment are going to remain unaffected by your later developments. Software and code integration is fairly complex. In many instances, applications that are working beautifully when tested separately may be difficult to integrate into a working system.

Value Added

When you are starting out with a Website, make sure that your expectations from the site are realistic. Plan your Website well by outlining the business objectives you would like it to fulfill. Effective online presence can provide your company with the critical competitive advantages over the rival firms.

Identify the ways you can utilize the powers of the electronic communications to maximize efficiency of your marketing programs, improve communications with distributors and suppliers, expand your market share and provide better customer service to the existing customers. Be aware of the problematic issues you may have to deal with such as channel conflicts and greater expectations from the customers’ side.

When assessing performance of your Website, remember that you are assessing a virtual storefront. Your assessment is never going to be final. Same as with any other storefront, the final assessment is the prerogative of your customers, who are going to be judging your efforts and voting with their dollars!

Michael Baron is the founder and CEO of Baron Consulting Group (BCG) - one of the leading E-commerce consultancy and training service providers in Australia. Michael has been involved in Electronic Commerce since 1997. He has completed over twenty E-Commerce projects in the areas of E-Learning Software Development, Web Site Development, Web Site Mapping and Electronic Marketing for both government and commercial organisations in Australia and overseas. Michael has also published a number of research and white papers and has been lecturing in Electronic Commerce at some of the leading Australian Universities. He is a sought-after speaker at E-Commerce Conferences, Forums and Seminars.

Copyright 2006 Bina Omar

Deciding to create a website for your home business is one of
the best ways to maximize your business success. However, as a
home business owner, you probably don’t have any expertise in
website creation, nor the money to hire an expert. The good news
is that this by no means that you can’t have a professional,
functional, and appealing website of your own at an affordable
price.

The trick is to know how to proceed, and what tools to use.

The following are 7 easy steps to get your own website off the
ground with little or no experience.

* Step 1: Plan your web site

This is the stage where you decide the purpose of your website,
what it will contain, and what keywords you need to focus on in
order to attract the most people. You may even want to start
thinking about the layout of the site at this point.

Before you go ahead, you must at least know what your site is
going to be about and what you’re planning to do with it.
Planning is probably one of the more boring parts of the web
building process, but nevertheless, remains to be one of the
most important.

* Step 2: Register a Domain Name

Once you’ve done that, you can start thinking about your domain
name. These days, you can get a domain name for as little as
$8.95 a year . Getting your own domain name is one of the most
important investment you’ll ever make for your web site.

You can purchase your domain from any registrar on the net. If
you’re not familiar with any, check out: http://www.GoDaddy.com

Decide on an appropriate domain name that is easy to spell, easy
to say, and isn’t too long to be impractical, then register it.
Your own domain name can instantly give you a professional aura
even before your customers reach your web site.

* Step 3: Choose a web host

The next thing to do is to rent some space on a server that is
permanently connected to the internet i.e. sign up for a web
hosting account. Decide upon an affordable, reputable, secure,
and well equipped web host company that can meet your
requirements of web site design, minimum downtime, and
reliability.

Depending on your requirements, you may want to check out the
web host’s support system, connection speed, storage space, data
transfer limit, e-mail features, FTP access, CGI and PHP support
and database access.

There are plenty of web hosts out there. Do your homework BEFORE
you sign up with one. And when you first start up with a new web
host, sign up using the monthly payment plan first. That way, if
you hate their services, you can always switch after the first
month.

If you’re in a hurry, I recommend signing up with
http://www.website-webhost.com. They’re not the cheapest host
out there but they provide many extras that could prove to be
time savers to home businesses.

* Step 4: Search for a web site template

Okay! You have an idea of what your web site is about, you’ve
registered a domain name and you’ve found a great web host. Now,
it’s time to look for the perfect web site template.

Why?

Well … because it’s a lot easier to start off with templates.
And you can get a much more superior web design quality.

Web site templates are created by web design experts. who has
the experience and skill to know what works and what doesn’t.
They’ve tried and tested more site designs than we’ll ever want
to see in our lifetime.

There are thousands of web site templates out there at our
disposal. Just go to Google.com and type in “web site template”.

You can choose free web site templates, or you can pay a one
time membership to a template reservoir, or you can even pay per
template. It’s up to you.

My favourite is http://www.TemplateMonster.com.

* Step 5: Get some tools

Once you have a your desired web site template, you will need to
get some tools to make changes to the template.

Since you don’t know any HTML, you’d want to get web authoring
software that will allow you to work ‘visually’. What you need
is a WYSIWYG web design software. And just in case, you decide
to learn HTML in the future, get one that will also work in code
mode.

There are many softwares out there today. The more popular ones
include Dreamweaver and Frontpage. If you’re after a free
software, you may want to check out NVU.

You’ll also need a web graphics software. Not so much to create
a graphic but more to customize the images in your web template.
To add labels on the buttons, for example.

A popular software is PaintShopPro. If you’re after a free
software, try out the GIMP.

* Step 6: Customize your web site template

Now that you have your web site template and your tools, all you
need to do is customize the template.

When customizing a template, all you really have to do is
replace the template content with your own. You may also need to
customize some of the images. Usually, this would be the logo.
Some templates uses button images as the navigation. You may
want to add text to these buttons to set up your navigation.

Once you’ve customized the template, just upload it to your
“rented” server space and you’re live on the internet.

* Step 7: Learn HTML to customize further

Although you don’t have to, I highly recommend that you learn a
bit of HTML. You don’t have to master it but knowing some basic
HTML will take you a long way when it comes to having more
control over your web site.

Follow these 7 easy steps and you’ll have a smooth and
affordable entry into the world wide web.

Overview:

What is web advertising?

Internet Advertising is popularly known as web advertising. Internet webadvertising giving Opportunity to the advertiser to target geographic country wise, subject wise, targeted
Customers only from more than 200 countries worldwide. Online Advertisers having a full control on Advertising budget in web advertising. as per performance results, advertisers can increase or decrease budget of webadvertising.

For getting started Internet online web advertising, you or your company must have online Products/services catalogues website. This website will be your online sales channels, your
Online office or your online shopping store/shop. Your prospective buyers will come through Internet search engines or many other following online places we are discussing here. You must have a good web traffic analysis tool to know about performance of your online e-marketing efforts. This online visitor’s traffic analysis tool must provide keywords
details which is your prospective buyers typing in search engines and business to business trade directories, this tool also must provide geographic details of prospective customers
visitors of your website.

Why web advertising?

Internet becoming a biggest marketplace and growing rapidly day by day. Online emarketing can bring buyers traffic through using web advertising.

Types of web advertising emarketing places:

1. Keyword Marketing: keyword selection and optimization, submissions can help you to bring prospective buyers traffic on your website through keyword marketing you can fetch huge traffic on your website, coming by typing your products/services keywords in many leading search engines.

2. Backlinks creation: Text link Advertising - Many text link providers offering text links backlinks on high page rank (high pr) WebPages. These high pr Backlinks can be helpful to
increase pagerank of your web pages on your website. your website can grab more and more traffic through search engines if your websites more and more webpages gets high pr and
increase link popularity.

3. Pay per click (PPC): Many leading search engines and business to business (b2b) trade Exchange directories offering PPC links web advertising promotions campaigns in economical
Packages. This innovative result oriented web advertising pay per click campaigns can increase customers traffic on your website for your products and services.

4. Banners advertising: Since last many years banners are very popular in web advertising. Banners are very useful to increase your online brand value. Nowadays Pay per Click banners can bring buyers on your website as well as PPC banners can help you to build online brand building on Internet.

5. Search Engines Submissions: Search engines are marketing places where your prospective Customers are coming to find your products and services so that your web site must be
Indexed in various search engines and also must be listed in all business to business trade Exchange directories. Your mantra is submissions in search engines every day, every hour,
every moment to increase buyers traffic on your online store 24×7x365.

6. RSS and Blogs: Rich site summary (RSS) is latest XML technology which can help your Website to increase pagerank and online customer’s traffic on your website.

7. Forums: Bulletin boards, egroups are online communities where you can discuss your Products/services information. You can also start your forums on your website. forums are very usefull to know about your buyers feedback. Forums are very much search engines Friendly.

8. Online Shopping Stores: Many leading portals helping companies to create online shopping Stores and increase buyers traffic on your website.

Yogesh Ahire is e-Marketing Consultant in Mumbai/India and Author of ebook “e-Marketing Whitebook”

URL: http://www.e-guru.org, http://www.branch-automation.com

While getting less public handwringing than during holiday season, the “abandoned shopping cart problem” continues to wreak havoc on online sales. Recently I judged a raftload of sites for the Webby Awards (my second time) and for the Inc. magazine Web Awards, as well as for my own clients. Here are the five irritants and obstacles that most frequently disrupt the visitor’s shopping experience at e-commerce sites.

1. Lack of quick orientation for first-time visitors. What does the site sell? I’ve had to poke around for several minutes sometimes to understand the focus of a site. Jargon is one culprit. Another is lack of context, like an airline site that sells tickets not giving a single clue on the home page in what countries or even what continent it flies.

2. Explanations that don’t explain. What does the product do and not do? Another basic, but it happens often that a site doesn’t explain whether their “Turbocharge VT27-Plus” is a one-time download, a subscription, a Web-based service or something else. An alternative payment system’s site failed to offer a clear, systematic description of how it works.

3. Missing prices and shipping charges. How much? You shouldn’t have to put something into a shopping cart or enter your credit card information to learn how much an item costs, including shipping. Unfortunately, you still find this mistake at sites that have had plenty of time to get their act together.

4. Unreadable text. Say what? Creativity gone haywire seems to be the hallmark of some Web designers. Orange letters on a blue background, olive green on black, light gray on white and blue on blue were combinations that sent me packing, as did lettering too small for over-40 eyes.

5. Inconsistencies. Huh? One site says, “To sign up, click on the Sign Up link at the top of every page.” But the site does not have any “Sign Up” link, only “Sign In.” Such carelessness wastes the time of earnest shoppers and gets them frustrated and fed up, never to return.

Blunders are equally rampant at well-funded corporate sites and those from home-based businesses. The good news is that many of the errors are extremely easy and inexpensive to fix.

About The Author

Marketing guru Marcia Yudkin is the author of Poor Richard’s Web Site Marketing Makeover: Improve Your Message and Turn Visitors into Buyers, from Top Floor Publishing (http://www.yudkin.com/mmakeover.htm) and numerous other books on marketing. She recently began offering Web site reviews for just $40 (http://www.yudkin.com/sitereview.htm).

marcia@yudkin.com

With so many products in ebay, which of it are ebay’s
bestsellers? We could take a look of these ebay’s bestsellers
through each category. Here are some of the ebay’s bestsellers
in each category:

Books

In terms of books, there are many ebay’s bestsellers books in
the different genre of books found in ebay. The most popular
genre would probably be fiction and some of these ebay
bestseller books include the Harry Potter series, Da Vinci Code,
and other popular books that became popular for the past months.
On the other hand, these ebay’s bestsellers could vary in price,
depending on how much the auction went.

Some ebay’s bestsellers books need not to be the most popular
ones rather; these books are sometimes the rare ones. These are
books that you wouldn’t ordinary see in ordinary bookstores.
This could be an old classic or a book previously owned by a
famous person. The auction for this kind of ebay’s bestsellers
is actually much higher than the previous ones simply because it
is rare.

Entertainment

Most of the ebay’s bestsellers in this category are also the
same when it comes to books. Sales for the entertainment part
are a combination of both the classic ones and the new ones. The
other half of the ebay’s bestsellers in this category belongs to
the new releases of DVD. These are movies which were shown just
2 months before the release of the DVD.

On the other hand, other ebay’s bestsellers of recent DVDs
include the DVDs by TV shows which are being sold per season.
These DVDs are considered ebay’s bestsellers because some people
tend to have an extensive collection of that sort of products.
The other half of this category belongs to the classics.

Some of the DVDs in this category are very priceless due to the
fact that it is hard to find and in some cases, considered as a
classic. These movies or TV shows has a much higher price than
the recent ones nevertheless it is still considered as one of
ebay’s bestsellers in terms of the entertainment industry.

Computers

Computers are now considered as a need and not as a luxuries as
opposed before. This is the reason why computers are considered
as ebay’s bestsellers. Things that are related to computers are
considered as a good product to sell because almost everyone
needs a computer and alongside with this computer are
accessories which make it complete.

Headsets, webcams speakers, and other computer-related gadgets
are emerging as ebay’s bestsellers. These gadgets are successful
because many people are actually interested in a quality buy
from sellers rather than a cheap price yet low-quality product.
The products found in ebay prove that it is a reputable website
which also sells reputable items as opposed to some negative
views regarding the site.

The items mentioned in the list are considered as best sellers
because of the high demand for them in ebay.

Another reason why these categories are chosen was because the
high selling rates obtained by these categories (books,
entertainment, and computers). These items are still in demand
even up to now and one of the reasons why these are successful
is the way it is presented in the market.

In ebay, one could guarantee that purchasing one product never
had this kind of fun.

Nokia, as everybody knows, is currently 1 of the globe’s most large makers of telephones and this is compared with other dominant competitors for instance, Samsung & Motorola (amid others). Nokia manufacture phones for each dominant sector and back in 07 Nokia was voted the most valuable global brand. Their goods fall into four various divisions - handsets, multimedia, networks & enterprise solutions.

The cell phone revolution headed by Nokia would seem to be inexorable. The beefy bricks found in the nineteen nineties for instance, the Nokia 2110 that was almost 236 grams have nowdays been swapped with light-weight, and fine telephones for example, the Nokia 6282 that comes in at 115 g or what about the Nokia 7380 that weighs only 80 g. All these now have the most current in communications electronics coupled with well founded fashion sense.

Deciding on a telephone was in the past an effortless affair then again when you think about the products possible to every one of us today, it becomes somewhat harder. Potential buyers will often buy their mobile devices with the thought of various extras, - might it be a statement of fashion an object which makes one look great - or could it be just for the advantages that the phones presently offer, for instance, e-mail & WAP, etc.

Additional technologies are also consolidating in Nokia mobile devices to allow the customer the possibility to communicate with more than simply speech. Nokia cell phones which include cameras are also becoming normal as is the facility to make video and broadcast them to friends and mates through multimedia messaging. You can furthermore see full color video on every one of their mobile devices and in excess of 1/2 are available with the opportunity to show WAP info (URLs altered just for the smaller screens on a telephones). Also obtainable is cell phones that are built with radios & MP3 facilities just for listening to your favourite music. The prices of their phones range from 0 right up to a few hundred pounds, it primarily depends about what someone want. If you want a decent supply of mobile phones speak to Nokia.

Nokia, as was previously stated, continues to be the planet’s top builder of handsets, despite some who reckon that Nokia’s number 1 ranking might be threatened especially by Sony Erickson. Even so, Nokia now have the advantage of decades of experience in telephone fabrication & has incredible loyalty from its mainstream consumers coupled with with their reputation just for reliability & user friendliness.

As new technologies become even more vital in today’s handsets, the space between Nokia and all its competitors will become additionally obvious.

I spent a lifetime in retailing and I’m still at it in retirement; albeit virtually.

You know how it goes.

You put up a web page and throw in some stock.

Your page begets another and another and another until one day you’re looking at a site that’s got more stock than Bloomingdales.

But you can’t stop…

The old sourcing skills are making a comeback, sharpening their talons, and coaxing you to duck and dive, bob and weave to find still more stock at even better prices.

So you build another virtual retail store and then another and another and another until you’re looking at an empire.

Then you diversify.

If you are upmarket, you go downmarket.

Why not?

There no shareholders breathing down your neck or smart ass vice presidents demanding that you pull in the reins.

And so you build a bargain basement store and another and another until you’re looking at Wal-Mart.

Expending your energy in this way is fun; it’s therapeutic, and if you go about matters in the right way, it doesn’t cost a thin dime apart from hosting fees - and it can be hugely profitable.

In between times you are still knocking out the odd bestseller just to keep your hand in.

But even now you can’t stop.

You dig deep into the inner recesses of the psyche and draw down expertise that has been rusting away for eons in the vaults of the supraconscious.

Ideas leap out at you from nowhere; you create courses on creative writing, starting a business, offline marketing, online marketing, maximising on retirement, and what have you.

So you build more websites and more websites and more websites and now you are busier than ever you were when you thought you were working.

So how am I doing with all these third age activities?

I’m not hurting.

Most mornings my inbox is crammed with cute little messages like ‘Invoice from Clickbank’ and ‘You have money at PayPal’ and so forth.

But don’t take my word for it.

Visit one of my stores and judge for yourself.

You’ll find an address in the resource box…

Jim Green is a retiree, entrepreneur, and published author with a string of bestselling hard copy titles to his bow including his latest ‘Your Retirement Masterplan’ ISBN 1857039874. You’ll get a taste of what he gets up to at this website http://howtoproducts-xl.com

Maybe no business requiring little or no capital pays as big as the online brokerage business. Perhaps this also explains why this business attracts so many rogues, dreamers, time-wasters and even mischievous people. Knowing how to avoid these characters is one of the keys to your success.

As a broker you will be putting buyers and sellers into contact with each other. Once the two parties know each other, they may kick you out of the deal. The best way to ensure that you remain a party is to sign a Non-Circumvention and Non-Disclosure (NCND) Agreement with them. The widely used NCND Agreement is the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) NCND 500.

Parties entering into this agreement agree not to circumvent each other on any transactions with any sources and/or principals disclosed by each other’s parties, without prior approval. They also accept not to disclose or permit to be disclosed the identity of any sources and/or principals already identified by other parties. Essentially the spirit of this agreement is to do what is fair and equitable. The NCND therefore will prevent partners from bypassing you to work with each other and so deny you commission.

Get a lawyer to handle your legal matters. You would be surprised to learn how lightly people take contracts signed over the net, especially the NCND, even despite supplying their details, signatures and company stamps. Partners who are not serious will back out if they learn you have a lawyer. Those who agree to go ahead under this circumstance are likely to be serious.

However before signing anything with anybody, you must first check their credibility. Ask all prospects to supply proof of previous performance. By requesting this evidence, you may avoid people who would waste your time. Is this enough cover for you? No!

Let sellers make you offers under penalty of perjury. One disheartening occurrence in the online brokerage business is that people will sell you their empty dreams. Once you are bound by an NCND and the party makes you a phoney offer, you can let your lawyer sue for perjury. You will be forwarding offers to buyers and when the seller is unable to supply, you are accountable to your buyer who, often, do not take kindly to failures to perform. But are all the buyers serious?

Not at all. One of the banes of the Internet is that it can make anyone appear important. Don’t take anybody on their own words. If you have a product and a buyer show up, ask for an LOI (Letter Of Intent) and BCL (Bank Capability Letter). Supplying the LOI only on the end buyer’s company’s letterhead shows the seriousness to purchase the product. The BCL, issued on the letterhead of the buyer’s bank, demonstrates that there are enough funds to cover the payment. Your bank will check the availability of funds from the buyer’s bank. This saves not only a lot of embarrassment but also heartaches.

As a broker you gain is only from commissions. When one is in view, ask for a commission protection agreement, usually called a Fee Protection Agreement, FPA, from whoever is to pay you. It is common to see parties default in the payment. Should that happen, the FPA will be your legal document to sue for your money.

To enable discussions between a buyer and a seller proceed smoothly, they often ask for all parties to sign an NCND Agreement so that the broker can step aside without fear of being sidelined. Making this concession ensures the smooth running of the discussions but could be disastrous for the broker. Yet this does not mean that the broker must stand between the buyer and the seller, wheeling back and forth messages between them. No serious buyer or seller will accept this. A broker, instead, should give a buyer and a seller direct contact to each other but insist that they send him copies of the messages they exchange. This is to enable you follow the discussions. Should the parties fail to comply, you must insist that they do so. If they persist, don’t hesitate to withdraw your offer.

Receiving copies of mails exchanged between your buyer and your seller is crucial for some reasons. First of all, it enables you to know how the business is going. Sometimes matters stall as a buyer or a seller might prefer to give his attention to another business and you will need to prod the discussions. Also, when you don’t participate in the discussions and all of a sudden one of the partners informs you that the deal did not go through, that leads to a lot of suspicion. But the worst doubts come when, worried by the silence, you ask the parties for a feedback only to be told that the deal has fallen through. But that is even better than when you leave a buyer and a seller to discuss between themselves and in the heat of the negotiations they omit you in the apportioning of the commission. If you are lucky, all the parties may decide to give you is a token fee.

Working online means receiving emails, often with attachments. Virus-infested mails abound these days. You must therefore protect your computer and the valuable data stored on it with the latest anti-virus programmes. Many are available, like Norton, McAfee, etc. Buy the one which will automatically remind you constantly to update the program online and free of charge. This will allow you to avoid the attack of new viruses. An outdated virus scan program cannot detect them.

You are serious about your brokerage business and you want to take it far. Your dream is legitimate and achievable. So take these steps so that neither man (or woman) nor virus can disturb it.

My name is Akoli Penoukou. I was born in Lome-Togo (West Africa) in 1953. I went to school in Ghana (West Africa) up to the high school diploma level. I taught French there for one year and then returned to Lome to work. From there I went on “adventures” in Nigeria (West Africa) and Germany. Back home in 1983 I began my business career.
This began with a West German import and export company which represented major German manufacturers like Henkel cosmetics in West Africa. I started as Executive Secretary and ended up five years later as Manager. Then I founded my own company in 1987 which I ran part-time. The activities of the firm having increased dramatically in three years, I diversified into imports and exports. The brokerage business and trade representation constitute the main thrust of my buinsess now.
I have trained as a freelance writer for children and adults and have published in newspapers and magazines such as “Aim” and “Clubhouse” in America.
Hobbies:writing, reading, gardening, languages, music, traveling, and teaching. I am married and have 3 children.

A sub-domain is an individual and separate web folder that can be created and attached to the main domain. This sub-domain can have its own FTP password. It can also have its own private CGI-Bin folders, and all other characteristics of an individual domain. But this sub-domain need not be registered as a separate domain and this means that the affiliate need not spend additional money for the setting up of the sub-domain.

How can a sub-domain help an entrepreneur achieve success in his affiliate marketing business? A sub-domain can help the affiliate in two ways. These are optimization in search engines and diversification of the affiliate’s website.

Optimization in Search Engines

Sub-domains are usually recognized by search engines as an individual online entity. And since it is a separate URL (as identified by search engines), it will be listed on its own and not be a part the main domain. In affiliate marketing, such a situation is advantageous. The affiliate can promote products in a dedicated website that will most probably be ranked high, provided that all other search engine optimization techniques are used.

Of course, there is a specification that the affiliate must comply with. That is, the sub-domain’s name must be attached to the main domain’s name using a dot. For example, the URL will be “subdomain.maindomain.com”. The affiliate should avoid using the hyphen, such as in http://subdomain.maindomain.com. The hyphenated name will need to be registered as a separate domain and this will demand additional expenses for the affiliate.

Diversification of the Affiliate’s Website

The contents of the website of an affiliate should be relevant to each other. This means that products that are extremely different from each other should not be located in one website. Otherwise, the affiliate runs the risk of discouraging and confusing the Internet visitor. But how will an affiliate promote products that are wholly unrelated to each other but are both interesting and financially feasible?

The affiliate can create sub-domains. One sub-domain will be dedicated to one product, while another will be focused on another product which is distinct from the first one. In this way, when the visitor opens the website, he will only find the products and information that he is looking for. He will not be distracted by the presence of another product banner that he has no interest in knowing about.

Of course, the creation of sub-domains may need to be consulted with the web host. Some web hosts offer free sub-domains while others demand a charge. The creation of sub-domains also involves work. But, after such work, the income of the affiliate will significantly increase.

Peter Garant’s affiliate marketing site offers high quality but cheap unique website content to webmasters who wants to maximize traffic and revenue on their affiliate sites.

About a year ago I took over an existing online business from a
friend of mine selling ink, toner and other printing consumables
and decided that there was a lot of potential for promoting the
website more aggressively over the internet. I started with
maybe a hundred dollars or so and a handful of customers
carrying over from the previous owner. One benefit was
inheriting his website as that gave me a good benchmark on what
I wanted and didn’t want when I got my own going.

Now a year later I have around ten times as many customers, a
respectable page ranking in Google (more about this later),
first page search engine rankings (SERP’s) in MSN with
respectable SERP’s in Yahoo and Google still needs some work.

Although I still have a long way to go (in truth I will always
have a list of more stuff to do) I’ve made a good start and by
all accounts done quite well considering my limited resources. I
have found that there are a great deal of free or very cheap
resources you can utilise for building and promoting a business
online and this is what I shall be passing on through this
series.

Although the following guide talks about starting an online
business selling printing consumables in Australia you can apply
much of it to other business types and I would imagine in other
countries.

Why do you want to be in business & does having an online
business suit you ?:- Often people go into business with
intention to get filthy rich overnight and then find themselves
trapped with a crumbling edifice that consumes their lives but
they have no passion for. So the question is why do you want to
be in business to begin with? If your answer is something like
‘to make tons of money’ at some point you will need to rethink
this as it wont be enough anymore. Of course I want to make more
money than I currently do but it’s the lifestyle I will have
when I have more money that creates my goals for next year, five
years etc.

Personally my desire was to create a place on the internet
people could go and shop with peace of mind knowing that they
would be getting great service, great prices etc. My focus is
always on developing good relationships with my customers and I
believe this psychology actually affects my attitude to how I
run my business as I am constantly looking for ways to better
serve my customers needs rather than trying to figure out how to
make more profit. I can honestly tell you that I rarely think
about building my business in terms of profits, rather I try to
identify ways to improve products and services to give current
customers more bang for their buck and attract new clients.

As to whether what you wish to do would be suited to having your
business online this is a trick question really because I can
honestly say that it doesn’t matter what you do, you should
definitely have a website for it ! If you have any doubts about
whether its worth spending time and money getting your business
online just do a Google search on ‘keyword research’ and use one
of the tools there (Nichebot is a good one) to check for a
likely keyword/s that represents your business and look at
what’s in the count column to see how many people have used that
word or words in the last 60 days. Then it’s up to you as to
whether you would like these people coming to your site as an
additional source of revenue or whether you’re happy to let them
go to your competition.

Anyway its about time I got into the good stuff so here
goes…….

Registering your business & domain name:- Your business name and
domain name - You obviously need to decide on a business name
and may have already done so but what may not be so obvious is
taking into consideration your websites domain name BEFORE you
choose a name for your business. Basically a domain name is what
you call your website so for example the domain name for my
website is cartridgespecialists ending with .com.au and
generally speaking you would have your domain name ending with
either .com.au or .net.au making you subject to the laws of
Australian domain name registration as explained below.

If you are going to register a website ending in either .com.au
or .net.au there are some rules you need to know about.
Australian rules of domain name registration state “The domain
name you order should have either be an exact match, acronym or
abbreviation of the supplied business registration, or it should
bear a close and substantial connection to the domain name”, so
before you rush out and register that really cool business name
you’ve just thought of its worth your while checking first to
see if the domain name has been taken or not.

You don’t have to register your domain name ending as above, you
can choose to register an international domain name such as .com
or even use the name or a place or person instead of an
Australian domain or in addition to. In fact this can be a smart
thing to do if you’re looking for as many ways as possible to
protect the name of your business or something you’re selling.

Choosing & registering a domain name - To choose a domain name
you need to go to somewhere like Netregistry to see what’s
available and as I mentioned above you’ll want to do this at the
same time if not before registering the name for your business.
There are quite a few places you can go to for checking whether
the domain name you’ve chosen is available or not. The one I
used is the one mentioned above but you don’t have to use them
there are plenty of others. Its worth shopping around though as
the prices vary quite a bit and it makes no difference at all
who you register your domain name through as they all have to
access their data from the same place meaning as soon as you
register your domain no one else can get it even if they go to a
different site to the one you used.

Using your top keywords in your domain name - If possible you
should have the main keyword/s for your business in your domain
name as it helps quite a bit with promoting your website online
and getting lots of people to come to it. Keywords are something
we’ll be covering later in much more depth but they are the
words people use when they search for information on the
internet using the search engines (you’ve heard of Google right
?). Whatever business you’re in start thinking about the likely
words people are going to use to find you on the internet. For
example for my business ‘ink, toner & cartridges’ are the 3 top
keywords people use in my industry when doing searches in
google, yahoo etc.

Register for more than 1 year - When you register your domain
name you should do so for at least 2 years as it will help you
promote your website to the search engines and it’s not
expensive at all really.

Sole trader, partnership or company? - This is very
straightforward and is simply a matter of going to the
government dept in your state that handles the registration of
business names and companies. I’m not an accountant so I’m not
going to go too much into which type you should use except to
say that you should not choose one of these on the basis of
wanting to protect your business name, logo or something the
business sells that you’ve invented. Trademark and patents are
designed for this and there are lawyers you should consult who
specialise in setting them up.

Expired domains - I’ll go into this more later on but thought
I’d give you a little taste of it now. Now that you know a
little about domain name what do you imagine happens to the ones
that people decide not to reregister each year or 2 years ? Well
they go back into the pool and become available for the next
person to grab but until someone else registers that domain
again what about all the people (otherwise know as ‘traffic’)
who are still trying to find that site ? That’s right expired
domains can be a great way to get traffic to your new site
immediately for a very low cost and you can replicate this as
many times as you want even if you only register an expired
domain for a year it can be a very worthwhile exercise !! More
about this later….

Well that’s for the first article in the series there’s a
checklist below to help you keep on track. Hope you enjoyed it
and stay tuned for the rest………..

What do I have to do checklist………… For the sake of
keeping it simple I’ll assume that you’ve chosen to register as
a sole trader (this is where most of us start out anyway) in
Victoria. Of course these figures vary from state to state for
the business name and how much you pay for your domain depends
on where you get it from so shop around!

1. Part 1 a) Register a business name ($100.00) b) Register a
domain name ($45.00)