Internet Business

In this section of the site, we are going to investigate different types of Internet business, marketing approaches and so on. Every Internet business is different, so pay attention to the different approaches.

Internet Business
Internet business is a rather vague term when you really think about it. While practically every site is an Internet business, each is unique. In the “real world”, Toyota dealerships and florist shops are both businesses, but you certainly wouldn’t run them the same way. Well, at least not for long.
The same holds true for Internet businesses, so we are going to throw out some different scenarios and talk about particular issues with each. Some articles will cover the entire build and market aspect of a site while others will just focus on a specific subject. If you don’t see your particular business area, give similar types of businesses a look. For instance, most sites offering services will have similar themes regardless of the specific service offered. Let’s get to it…

Starting Online Business

You have made the decision on starting an online business. You want to do it! So, what is the first step to starting an online business?

Starting Online Business

The first step is picking a business area. Contrary to your instincts, do not pick something specific in the business area. For example, let us assume you want to start an online business providing strategies for saving money. Your business area is money. Don’t make the mistake of jumping to a more specific area. Instead, you need to do some research.

The beautiful thing about starting an online business is you can access vast amounts of information on the cheap. In this case, you want to use the following tool:

Try Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a program that tracks the exact phrases used by people on the search engines to find things. You can type in any subject matter and Wordtracker will spit out the top 300 phrases incorporating that subject matter that were used in searches over the last 60 days. It draws this information from a database of over 300 million searches and is very accurate. Frankly, Wordtracker is considered the bible of Internet marketing.

Going back to our example, you would type in “money” into wordtracker and see what search phrases have been used over the last 60 days and how often they have been used. You then look for phrases with lots of searches. Exam the list to determine if any of the keyword phrases appeal to you. If they do not, move on to another subject matter.

In fact, let’s just go ahead and do it. I’ve opened my wordtracker account and typed in my subject matter – money. As expected, there are tons of searches incorporating the word. Ahhh…and I’ve found a subject matter. There are over 10,000 searches a day for “unclaimed money.” I happen to know that states collect unclaimed money for wages, tax returns and such. Sounds like a perfect online business to me!

Using Wordtracker is the key to starting an online business. By using it, you can make sure your business idea is one that people are searching for on the net. Nothing is worse than building a site in which nobody has any interest. Wordtracker keeps you from doing it.

Online Turnkey Business Website

You have decided to open a business online, but are not sure where to start. This brings us to the subject of the online turnkey business website.

Online Turnkey Business Website

An online turnkey business website comes in a couple of variations. All of them are designed to give you a base to work off for your business. The idea is to create the fundamentals of a site and then let you go to town with it. Depending on the platform, using one of these platforms can be good or bad.

Let me save you a ton of money from the outset. If you are considering an online turnkey business website that is fully contained, to wit, it gives you a site, domain and products to sell, you are going to have a very difficult time making money. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, your site is no different than all the other turnkey sites sold by the same company. Why would prospects come to your site instead of any of the others? Simply put, there is no way to make your site standout. Further, your marketing will be a major pain. Many pay-per-click search engines will not let you list the site because they only allow one listing per affiliate program and they will consider a turnkey business as one. Further, you will have difficulties pursuing any search engine rankings because you will have little ability to change the site. I strongly encourage you to avoid these online turnkey business websites like the plague.

There are online business website builders that work fine. These services essentially give you the ability to control the design of your site, and require you to have a domain as well as your own products and services. On the high end, we offer Business Creator Pro. It gives you the ability to build clean and fast sites with little knowledge of html. Other products are offered by Yahoo and so on.

This second set of platforms, known as online site builders, are really the way to go. In fact, this site is built using one. The days of learning and hammering out html code for pages has gone the way of the horse and buggy. The online site builders give you convenience, flexibility and control over your online venture. This allows you to manipulate the site as you gain a better understanding of your market and all things Internet.

An online turnkey business website sounds like a great thing at first blush, but it can cost you in the long run. Make sure you understand what you can and cannot do before committing to a system.

Accept Credit Card - No Merchant Account

Getting and keeping a merchant account online is a pain in the derriere. If you want to accept a credit card, but have no merchant account, there are some options.

Accept Credit Card - No Merchant Account

You must be able to accept a credit card payment if you are selling on the Internet. Unfortunately, the bane of most sites is the merchant account. The problem with merchant accounts is particular to the Internet.

Merchant accounts come with risk factors assigned to them. A merchant account for your local coffee shop is going to have a low risk factor because people rarely complain about charges for bad coffee or dispute whether they received the coffee. Unfortunately, most Internet merchant accounts are given a rating of high risk. People dispute charges all of the time, fairly or not. Then end result of this getting and keeping an account can be expensive, bad news for new or small online businesses.

If you want to accept credit card payments, but have no merchant account, there are some options. The options range from selling through another site that provides credit card transactions for you to using sites that are setup to solve your merchant account issues. Each has there benefits, so let’s take a look.

If you are selling products, EBay and Amazon offer options you may want to consider. EBay obviously is an auction site, but you can sell products through it like any normal business. The advantage of EBay is that it already attracts a lot of traffic, so you don’t really have to put much effort into your marketing. Amazon is also very good for this and I prefer it to EBay. Many people are surprised to learn that Amazon sells far more than just books. You can open a seller account with the site and sell a wide variety of things. Both sites take a small percentage of your sales, but they make life very easy when it comes to accepting credit card payments with no merchant account.

PayPal is a site that offers transaction processing services. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of it, but many people are and it does a tremendous amount of business. PayPal is essentially a giant merchant account. There is one problem, however, with the site. Any buyer has to be an approved member before they can purchase from you. If they are not, they can signup, but have to wait a few days to verify their account once a charge appears on their bank account or credit card statement. Obviously, this requirement tends to kill any impulse purchases.

There are a variety of other sites that offer credit card purchase options if you have no merchant account. They seem to come and go, so I can’t really recommend any of them. While they sound like great deals, you can never be sure if what exists today will be there tomorrow. I am sure some of them are excellent, but you need to look into them and do your due diligence before deciding whether to use them.

If you want to accept credit card payments with no merchant account, you are in luck. There are plenty of options, but make sure you understand the fees you have to pay and how the process works for each.

E-Business Failures

As you know from the dot.com debacle in the late 1990s, starting an e-business is no guarantee of success. E-business failures happen, but often for obvious reasons.

E-Business Failures

E-business simply refers to an online business devoted to profits through the sale of products and services. In the real world, a majority of small business startups fail because they get overwhelmed with overhead expenses. On the net, this is less of a problem if you can do any of the work yourself, such as building pages for your site. Even if you can’t, most sites do not fail because of expenses. There are plenty of other reasons.

E-Business failures almost always have a common denominator. The issue involves traffic. On the net, traffic refers to the number of visitors a site gets. Most e-businesses fail to properly research whether there is enough traffic for their area of business before building out their site. The first step is always to research whether people are actually searching for your business service or product. You can look under the keyword category in our article section to learn more.

The second area where e-business failures occur involves ignoring the keywords in question. Once you have a keyword list, you must focus on it. The list is telling you what problem people have in your field and you must supply them with a solution to each specific problem. If you do not provide the services or products indicated by certain keywords, figure out how to offer them. If you give prospects what they want, they will return to your site over and over again. Return visitors are the key to making profits.

Many e-business failures occur because sites bite off more than they can chew. The temptation is to go for the broadest subject matter possible. This is a mistake. You should focus on a niche. If you want to open an online bookstore, you will never be able to compete with Amazon. Amazon simply has far too big of a head start. If you focus on books devoted just to a certain subject, such as Eastern philosophy or home improvement, you have a good chance of making a profit. This can occur because fans of the niche will come to your site instead of Amazon since you focus entirely on the niche in question.

E-business failures occur because people simply do not take the time to properly research the situation before jumping in with both feet. Take your time and full understand your market and what you are getting into. If you are patient and thorough, you will not become one of the e-business failures dotting the net.