Starting An Online Business - What You Need To Do To Get It Up And Running

by Diamonique Fortune

As you may have noticed, starting an online business is a little more complex than starting a "real world" business. That is because your business will be operated from cyberspace, and not from a physical location per se. This is the main reason for the confusion you and most beginners may have when attempting to start an online business.
Even if you know nothing about business, you know that with a "real world" business, there are certain "physical" steps you can take to get your business up and running quickly if you wanted to. For instance, with an offline business, you come up with your business concept and name, obtain a business license, choose your product or service, select the location where you will operate your business, establish telephone service, print business cards, flyers, catalogs, etc., and advertise your business. Voila, you're ready to do business.
With an online business however, you can do all these things if you want, but it's not necessary. But, since your business will be located on the Internet, in cyberspace, the steps are different from the ones you take with an offline or "real world" business. With an online business, you will need to have an Internet address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) -- a business name that ends with .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, etc. This tells the world where your business information or website is located.
Your business will need to have web space for you to display your products and services in cyberspace for others around the world to do business with you. What that means is either you or someone else will have to design a website for you to get your business online.

If you are limited in your knowledge of computers and the Internet, and know absolutely nothing about html, web design, keywords, and search engines, this can delay you getting your online business started, and up and running.
The technical knowledge that's required to get your business online, are the obstacles you face when deciding to start an online business and make money. This can be very frustrating, if you have a great business idea that can make you a lot of money.
The three quickest ways to starting an online business and get it up and running is:
1. Hire a web designer to design your website for you.
2. Purchase or obtain a free WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software and create your own website.
3. Purchase a website template, and using an html editor, edit the template to your liking. This will require some knowledge of html.
Using either one of these ways will get your business online, once you purchase web space, and upload your files to your host server. Once you have a website, then you need to begin to market your online business and drive traffic or visitors to it. There are many ways you can do this, but it will require ongoing study and learning.
Understanding how the search engines work in relation to keywords, and how this relates to people finding your online business and eventually buying from you, will determine whether your online business will be a success.
What it all boils down to is synergy -- effectively combining the use of the search engines, the right keywords, and the most cost effective and successful marketing strategy to drive targeted traffic to your website together at the same time, to make a lot of money with your online business.
For more information about this subject, read "The Entreprenuer's Guide To Making Money Online at: The Entrepreneur's Guide To Making Money Online.

Diamonique Fortune is the Marketing and Communications Director for http://www.SuccessLearningNow.com, which sells unique success learning e-books, video learning e-books, and instant Internet businesses for entrepreneurs, you won't find anywhere else, online or off.

Golden Rules To Starting An Online Business

by Kieran Philip

Naturally you will need some degree of knowledge about internet marketing in order for your business to be a success but by all means you do not need a PhD in marketing.
All you really need is a basic knowledge of how computers work and the determination to succeed.
I have written below some basic advice that you absolutely need to follow to even stand a chance of being successful.
1) write down what you hope to achieve from having an online business
Here Are Some questions you really need to ask yourself when doing this: Why do I want to start up an interactive business?
- What will my product or service is?
- How much knowledge do I have about my product or service
- what do I know about my competition
- Where I am going to find all of my customers / prospects
Remember to actually write these questions and answers down onto paper so that you can refer to them throughout the duration of your interactive business.
2) you need to choose a product or service that you intend to sell to your clients. By browsing the internet it is possible to find hundreds of products and services you can sell. The internet makes it possible for you to buy a product or service with resell rights, this means you can purchase a product and then have the legal rights to resell it at your own price and keep 100% of the profits. When selling your product or service do not put your personal financial gains first, put the customer first instead and make sure you deliver a good high quality product to your client, this will possibly create further business from that customer in the long run.
3) When you own an interactive business you will need a website (this will act as your "shop"). Every website has what's called a "domain name", this is what people will type into their internet browser to get to your "shop".
You really need to think carefully when choosing your domain name, its needs to be as short as possible i.e. Google.com or yahoo.com and it needs to be remember able.
4) Your website! Having a good website is absolutely essential; this is your very first impression to your customer. It has been proven that when a customer visits a website they make their mind up as to continue browsing in the first 4 seconds.
Some of the components of your website that you need to think about include:

-Products And Services
-Contact Information
-Pricing
-Testimonials
- Frequently Asked Questions
-Resources & Articles
-Refund Policy
-Privacy Policy
-About Us page
5) What website hosting company should I use? A Web host is a company that provides server space for your website. The web host provides space for your website just as a commercial building provides space for your shop or office.
Below is a few thinks you need to look at and take into consideration when deciding on a webhost,
- Web Space
- Bandwidth allotment
- Reliability and speed of access
6) When customers want to purchase your product or service from your website they need somewhere to go that is secure for them to enter their payment details. PayPal is the internet's Number 1 payment processor, it is internationally recognised, its 100% safe and traceable and it deposits money into your bank immediately. I strongly recommend using PayPal.
7) How do I promote my new interactive business?
Write An Article: the very first thing you want to do is brand your product or service and let as many people as possible know that it exists. An article is great for this.
Directories: List your site here too. Directories organize sites into categories. Good examples of Directories: Yahoo, Magellan.
Ezine Listings: If you have an e-zine to promote along with your site. Why not list it with one of the many e-zine services on the Internet. E-zine Library is a good one to start with.
Free Classifieds: You will have to submit to a ton of FREE classifieds to get any significant traffic. Why? You are competing with thousands of other Ads. Remember to work on your Ad copy and make it attention grabbing. Go to one of the popular search engines, type in Free Classifieds, and surf to the top 20 classified sites for beginners.
FFA Pages: Free For All's are worth a try. Be prepared for a avalanche of e-mails from FFA web site owners. If your title is attention grabbing you will get a few clicks. Good Attention grabbing headlines, FREE, Limited Time, Limited Offer, Proven, Secrets, and many more if you brainstorm.
Tell Friends and Family: If your friends, family, acquaintances, have an Internet Connection, e-mail them telling them about your new website, and ask them to visit often. Offer a FREE incentive if they tell a few friends to surf over.
8) You need to track how many visitors you are getting to your website, how many visitors opt in to my free newsletter of free gift, if you decide to email people, how many of them actually visit your website? These are all questions you need to ask yourself and find out, this way to are able to see where you should devote your marketing efforts too.
9) Final note. A strong word of advice, take your initial six months as a training period, i would be very surprised if you became a huge success in this short time, unless you had someone like me training you. Just remember, even people like me had to start some where, it took me at least one year to become successful so patience and strong determination are really required.
If you are really serious about becoming successful as an interactive marketer i really suggest find someone like me (i am not being bias you can choose anyone) to coach you. I hope this information helps, keep your eye out for more of my postings.

By Kieran Philip, successful interactive marketer and coach, http://www.veretekmarketing.co.uk

Remaining Positive Doing Business Online

by Tommy Hill

In business online, there are always setbacks. And when you are trying to build a business, you have not only your own uncertainties about yourself but sometimes people in your environment are less than helpful. There are even many people that actually discourage one, jealousy or other factors. But by remaining positive about your project and your goals, you accomplish several things, you keep yourself positive and continue to get things done that relate to your goals and avoid wasting a lot of time.

You also will end up changing people in your environment who might have a tendency to turn negative and stop them in their tracks before they do so. Really, there's no reason why you can't be an awesome success. All you need, is to keep your attitude positive, and then really dig in and learn your tools. Get signed-up today and you'll get your website up and running tonight as well automatically and you can be making huge commission by tomorrow sending out emails to people you know that like making money like you do!
The definition of insanity is anyone that continues to do the same thing and expect a different outcome! Are you insane? Stop doing the same things that not working to give you and your family enough weekly income to enjoy your lives. Until Next time...keep your online business in focus continue to grow continue to plan, also know your main objectives. Until next time just keep planning and planning to take your business to the next level.

Patience in Online Business - It is Virtue

by Sherrie Brownfield

Patience, some have more than others, but in business, it is a virtue we all must obtain.
Most of the time people start an online business to make money. Well, we know of course, that we have to spend some money in order to make some money. This can be tricky in knowing where to spend one's money (that is another article in itself). Perhaps even trickier at times can be having the patience to wait for that constant flow of traffic that we all long for. This is where patience becomes a true virtue.
It can take up to 90 days or longer for some to see consistent results. This is many times why there are those program hoppers out there. They don't see results quickly and they think, "this program doesn't work." So they move on to the next one. This becomes very costly in the long run. It is better to continue investing what you can into one business until it really gets off the ground.

As quoted from an article that was sent to me recently "...patience is an essential ingredient for online business success. Without it, you can give up too soon. Very few people achieve online success immediately so you need to be willing to wait until you get the results you want. This is why persistence and patience go hand in hand. Keep moving towards your goals and be willing to be patient until you reap the rewards you desire."
Patience Brings Prosperity
Demand Success! You Deserve It!

To help you reap what you desire: http://sherriesglobalcashportal.com

How to Use Wikipedia For Your Research

by Dario Borghino

"Welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" recites the banner on the front page of the site. That doesn't sound like something a student looking for accurate information for his research wants to hear, but that surely doesn't mean Wikipedia is not a valuable site, with plenty of resources that can often help you find objective information.
It's true: any user, even anonymous, can potentially edit almost every article to add or delete information at his discretion and, whether intentionally or not, meaningfully decrease its quality. However, with just a little bit of attention on your side, you can easily work around this defect -- which, after all, didn't stop Wikipedia from rapidly becoming the largest repository of human knowledge on the Internet -- to extract valuable and unbiased information from almost every article.
How to recognize an unbiased article from one that may not be? Even in what seems a well-written piece, you usually can't be sure that each and every single sentence in it contains correct statements. As a rule of thumb, try looking at the number of references compared to the article length. A long article with few references is likely to have been written recently by very few users, which means the matter hasn't quite been discussed and reviewed properly yet, while one with many references is much more likely to contain correct statements.

The other main factor to take into consideration are the so called 'meta-data' associated to it. Wikipedia, just like many other wikis, offers a number of pages related to the article itself which very often help you decide on whether you should trust its content or not.
To sum up, the main factors to take into consideration are:
1) the article length;
2) {number of references} / {article length} ratio;
3) its protection policy;
4) the date of creation;
5) the article history;
6) the number of pictures, tables, etc.;
7) its quality rating.
Finally, you can still use Wikipedia for your research even if, all things considered, you are not too confident about the quality of the article. In cases like this, you can still use Wikipedia as a secondary source by looking at the References and External Links sections.
For further information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia

Check out the author's website: http://wysinnwyg.altervista.org/

File Hosting - Benefits Of File Hosting Premium Account

by Shaheryar Saleem

The Internet is a jungle, you can't get enough of it. Many of us are very much addicted to movies, games, music, reading books etc, and that's why we are all in hunger of getting these stuffs. In this article I will tell you the benefits of having a premium account of major file-hosting websites.
A file-hosting company allows users to upload their stuffs and after that, files can be downloaded via a free account or a premium account. I will not be discussing about free accounts here as a premium account holds a lot of things which a free account cannot give to you. File-hosting websites have a large database of various files and contents like movies, songs, informational videos, ebooks and more which you won't be able imagine, they have tons of files which can be downloaded easily if you have a premium account.
Below are the most important benefits of having a premium account of File Hosting Website:

· Super-Fast servers, maximum speed while downloading.
· Ability of using downloading managers like IDM, Flashget, DAP for downloading files.
· No waiting, you'll be able to download files immediately.
· Direct download links available, just put the links and it will be automatically downloaded if you want to.
· Extra server-slots will be also available for premium users.
· Download as much as you want, no file-size limit.
· Back-up your files, when you upload a file as a premium user, your uploaded file will not delete until you delete it by yourself.
· Full-prior dedicated support, get instant reply from their staff.
Besides all these points, don't forget file-hosting websites are having the largest database of files all around the internet, so your downloading hunger would not vanish. Rapidshare premium account costs around $11 / month and $86 / year, I would personally prefer to have a full one-year premium account if you are very sticky to downloads.

The Mistakes I Made in My First Year Online

by Valerie Dansereau

My website is just over a year old, so I've been reflecting on my first year and the mistakes I made. I think at the top of the list would have to be the fact that I didn't ask this question of other marketers:
What would you do differently in your first year if you knew then what you know now?
Here are my own answers to that question:
1) Trying to go in too many directions at once. In my first year of internet marketing, I was like a kid in a candy store. I could see and smell success all around me and I knew I wanted some, so I tried a little of this and a little of that. End result - not a lot of progress. I switched lanes way too often. Sort of like following one car for several blocks, then choosing to follow a different car on a whim. Needless to say, you don't reach a destination that way.
2) Being a serial buyer. Along the same lines, I was intrigued with way too many products, many of which were useless. I wish I could have back some of the money that I spent foolishly so that I could spend it with forethought and planning.
3) Not sticking close enough my mentors. I have a couple of people that are at the core of any success I have achieved. At the top of the list is Ken Evoy, the brains behind Site Build It. If you purchase a site through Site Build It, one fringe benefit is an incredible forum full of very experienced and helpful people (many of whom have sites in the top 1% of all websites). In fact, the forum alone is probably worth the price of SBI.

Another example of sticking close to people that are willing to teach you, Napoleon Hill in "Think and Grow Rich" talks about needing a Master Mind group - in other words, putting your head together with others who have similar goals. Or in his words, he defines the Master Mind as "Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose."
An old friend of mine used to say, "A smart man learns from his mistakes. A smarter man learns from the mistakes of others." I probably didn't have to make all the mistakes I made, if I had only listened to those with more experience.
4) Not using a daily or weekly planner. I rely way too much on my brain. I expect myself to remember things, and often I let myself down. When I sit down to work, I find myself often wasting time "warming up" because I don't remember where I left off or what I was trying to accomplish. This is one big thing that I am working on in the coming year - making out a schedule for the coming week at the beginning of the week, so I remember exactly where I'm trying to go.
Mistakes aren't all bad - they always offer lessons. Or as John Powell said, "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." I'm looking forward to a better year because of the mistakes I made last year.

Valerie Dansereau is a banker turned entrepreneur. Visit her website at http://www.work-at-home-parenting.com To learn more about building a website through Site Build It, visit http://www.work-at-home-parenting.com/build-a-website.html