Dave J: E-commerce Know-How
Revealing the secrets of starting, managing and marketing your own online business with little or no capital down, while generating real profits. [ Bio: www.davejlive.com ] .
Issue #1: Eight Proven Steps to Building A Profitable E-commerce Business
What prompted me to write a book on E-commerce business? Lately, there is a gold rush taking place, but not on the mining ground. It’s taking place over the Internet. Since the bubble burst in 1998, the Internet has created hundreds of home-made millionaires. Hence, many people who read about the success story would not want to miss out the band wagon! I’ve personally seen many people spend thousands of dollars attending Internet or E-commerce seminars that promised them “a mountain filled with gold”. Sadly, only a very small percentage made real profits after these courses.
Before you hit the local bookstore to grab my book entitled “Secrets Revealed: 24 hours to establishing your own Ecommerce business” right here I am going to share with you a proven sequence of steps you can follow to guarantee your success as an online entrepreneur, regardless what you intend to promote, sell or market.
Step 1: Identify a particular problem and solve it.
Most online entrepreneurs make the mistake of finding a product before they have a market. But unless people are actively searching for your product online, you'll never make a sale. The trick is to find a group of people with a particular problem they're trying to solve and then you help them to solve it.
Thankfully, the Internet makes market research easy. Here are some easy steps for researching for a market with a particular problem
Visit online forums to see what questions people ask and what problems they’re trying to solve
Figure out which keywords a lot of people are searching but not many websites are competing for;
Check out your potential competitors by visiting their websites and taking note of what they’re doing to fill demand
Once you done these three assignments, create or source out a product that could specifically solve their problems, in a way that is better than your competitors. Which means, you could deliver the solution at half the price, or you could guaranteed them your solution worked 100% by providing 12 months money back guarantee, and a myriad of innovative methods.
Step 2: Employ marketing message that arouse attention.
On your website, the content (or known as marketing message) of your webpage has to do the arousing, luring and buying-action for you – it has to sell! There’s a proven formula for writing your marketing message that'll take visitors through the selling process from the moment they arrive:
Arouse interest with a compelling headline (i.e. Grab a free report on “how to make money online in less than 7 minutes”; Explore how a 17 year-old kid made $100,000 in Facebook.com and $50,000 in Slide.com)
Describe the problem your product can solve (be specific and not vague)
Show them why you can be trusted to solve the problem with no hassle (avoid filling up the whole webpage with reasons and phony claims)
Add testimonials from people who've used the product (don’t over add!)
Talk about the product and how it benefits the user (give examples or show some videos)
Make an offer (i.e. buy one free five) or a guarantee (i.e. 12 months money back)
Create urgency for visitors to take buying-action
Give them enough reason to buy (make the buying process simple and quick)
Throughout your message, focus on how your product or service is uniquely able solve their problems or make their lives better (or different, or enhance). While you brainstorm, always bear in mind the customers mindset that is WIIIFM – what is in it for me.
Step 3: Website development.
By now, you ought to identified your “hungry” market, the solutions (in the form of product) and your marketing message. You’re now ready to build your website.
Remember to keep it simple. Your website is your online storefront, so be sure to make it customer-friendly. You have less than 10 seconds to grab a visitor's attention before they're gone (not forgetting that 2 seconds goes to loading the webpage). Some important tips in your website development:
Use a plain fonts, like Arial or Verdana, on a white background;
Make your navigation clear and simple and keep it consistent throughout your website;
Only use graphics, audio or video ONLY if they enhance your message;
Include an FREE opt-in offer so you can collect email addresses;
Ensure you title tag, meta tag and keywords contain the keywords that your targeted group would use;
Your website should be view friendly – not every has a 32-inch monitor like Bill Gates;
Test it on Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer browsers before launching it;
Subscribe to a web host that does all the job for you – from domain registration to website submission to payment collection. Try 1and1.com.
Step 4: Employ search engines to generate higher traffic.
How do you get traffic to a brand new website? The answer is… Pay-per-click advertising, which has two advantages:
The ads show up on search pages immediately (no tweaking needed);
They allow you to test different keywords, headlines, prices and selling approaches.
Not only do you get traffic immediately, but once you've figured out what keywords are working best, you can use them throughout your web message and code (title tag, meta tag, meta descriptions) which will help your rankings in organic search results.
Step 5: Become an expert in your field to generate even more traffic.
People use the Internet to find information. If you provide valuable information for other websites to use - and include a link back to your website - you’ll get more traffic and better search engine rankings. Some ideas for establishing yourself as an expert include:
Give away free content, like articles, videos or other useful information, and distribute that content through online article directories and social media portals;
Include “send to a friend” links on your webpage's valuable content
Become an active expert in industry forums and social networking websites where your target market hangs out.
If you use these tactics, you’ll reach new readers. But even better, every website that posts your content will link back to yours, and search engines (especially Google and Dmoz) love links from relevant websites and will reward you in the rankings accordingly.
Step 6: Use email marketing to turn visitors into long-term buyers.
According to comShare and Forrester (both are leading research organizations), email marketing is the most effecting marketing tool available online after search engines. That’s why you cannot miss out this tool in your online quest for profitability.
Profitable email marketing starts with building a database. The most effective free method of building it is through an opt-in list. Opt-in list is a database of name, email and relevant information that you collect from your visitors and given the permission to send email.
When you build an opt-in list, bear in mind to give out an irritable “carrot” to entice visitors fill in the opt-in form (i.e. musical ringtone, special reports, 999 make-money-idea manual, special-purpose software). While you construct your opt-in form, avoid requesting more than three data. Let’s recap the five reasons why you cannot miss out email marketing:
You're giving potential customers something they've asked for;
You're developing lifetime relationships with people in your target market;
The response is 100 percent measurable;
It's cheaper and more effective than print, TV or radio advertising because it's highly targeted;
It can be almost entirely automated.
Anyone who visits your website and opts in to your list is a very hot lead. And there's no better tool than email to let you effortlessly follow up with those leads.
Step 7: Boost your revenue through back-end sales and up selling.
One of the most important Internet marketing guidelines is to develop every customer’s lifetime value. At least 38% of people who have purchased from you once will buy from you again if you follow up with them (consistently but not forcefully). Closing the first sale with a customer is by far your most difficult task - not to mention your most expensive one. So here's three simple approaches to get them to buy again:
Offer products that complement their original purchase;
Send out electronic loyalty coupons they can redeem on their next visit;
Offer related products on your "thank you" webpage.
If you reward customers for being loyal, they'll become even more loyal to you in return.
Step 8: Launch an affiliate program to maximize your revenue.
Once your business is up and running, it's time to launch your affiliate program. Affiliates are people who promote your products on their own websites for a cut of the selling price. Every time they send you a buyer, you pay them a commission.
An affiliate program is a simple, low-maintenance way to grow your business. Once you get your program set up, all you have to do is share your marketing materials with your affiliates and send out checks when they make sales. If you use PayPal as your payment gateway, the payment to your affiliates will be done automatically. By doing this, you don't have to spend money on advertising - your affiliates do the advertising for you. Better yet, you only pay them when they make a sale.
The internet changes quickly, but the principles of how to start and grow a successful E-commerce business have changed very slowly in the last than ten years I’ve been in the business of consulting my clients on internet marketing.
If you’re just starting out, stick to the sequence of steps in this quick guide. If you’ve been online awhile, do a quick review and see if there’s a step you’ve been neglecting or never got around to doing in the first place. Based on my experience in consulting more than 1,000 corporations, you can’t go wrong with these eight basics.
Issue #2: Getting Your Business Online for Just US$200 (or less)!
In my experience training people all across Asia and the US, I noticed it’s common to know 80-90% of them planned to start their own business. If owning a business is one of your goals, spending five minutes to read this article could be a turning point to you. There are many types of business you can start and the list is endless. However, whatever business you want to start and whichever industry you want to penetrate, here is a wise startup idea – E-commerce business.
Why? Online business one is by far the cheapest and the quickest way to start up any business, regardless of your intended industry. Besides, it’s the most valuable “real estate” you’ll ever have as it could reach out to your target customers within seconds. Unlike physical real estate, which sits on a same spot and “wait” for prospects and customers to come. To date, 85% FORTUNE 500 companies are deploying E-commerce as a tool to promote, sell and market their products. For example, eBay, Apple iTunes and Amazon solely rely on the Internet to reach out to their customers - they do not have physical outlet!
I’m sure you want to get started on the right foot, and the Internet would be your first real estate you going to invest. I am going to reveal to you six sure-fire ways to startup your own business in less than US$200, while proven to reap real profits in 30 days. Un-believable? Let’s find out together...
Tip #1: Log on to Wordtracker.com to find a product people are “hungry” for. Cost: $59.00 for one month.
This would be the first and the most crucial action you need to do before starting up. You need to locate a “hungry” market and source a product that could fulfill that market. www.Wordtracker.com is a keyword research tool that makes this step as easy as ABC. It shows you what people are searching for in the search engines, so you can figure out what their needs are and then present them with solutions. One month Wordtracker membership should give you plenty of time to complete this first step.
Tip #2: Select your host and choose a domain name. Cost: $24.00 for three months.
Most hosting companies are dirt cheap these days and will include a domain name when you sign up. If you opt for a beginner account with www.1and1.com, you can get six months of hosting for only $24.00, plus $100 worth of online advertisement vouchers. It will provide you with everything you need to get started, from beginner-friendly website builder, a domain name to your choice, email auto-responder, pay-per-click advertisement, 24/7 phone and email support to blog publishing.
Tip #3: Super-customize your website design and features using NVU. Cost: Free.
Although most hosting companies furnish you with a basic website builder, you intend to have advanced HTML editing capabilities to customize your website. If you're not willing to spend, www.NVU.com (open source software) will do the job. It provides a great WYSIWYG editor for free download. As you get more advanced, you may want to upgrade to Dreamweaver, which you can buy at www.Adobe.com. But NVU is more than enough to get you started.
Tip #4: Collect any form of payment. Cost: Free.
Whether you have a product to sell now or later, you need to be able to accept payment online. If each of your purchase is below US$5,000 per transaction, www.PayPal.com is by far your best option because it's free and easy to be added into your website. Signing up is free and elect for "Premier" account as a start. You can upgrade to higher options with additional features later as your E-commerce business grow. Alternatively, you can also tryout www.2CheckOut.com for free. If your transaction is huge, you can opt for www.WorldPay.com which allows you to collect credit cards, debit cards and other universal range of payments.
Once you set up an account with any of the online payment gateway, you need to cut and paste the HTML code given to you on your website. It’s very easy and takes less than one minute.
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Tip #5: Launch pay-per-click advertising to generate qualified traffic to you. Cost: $100.
Take note that once your website goes online, it’s usually badly ranked in most search engines. Don’t panic! According to independent research, search engines generate 85% of traffic to most websites. The bad news is, if your website appears on the 5th page of the search results, your visibility is near to zero!
Here's some good news, when you sign up for your hosting account with 1and1.com, you’re given $125 in free traffic from Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft. If you match that investment, you'll have $250 to play with. This figure can go a long way if you do things right.
Just make sure you don't blow your money on high-priced, overly general keywords. Stick to savvy pay-per-click strategies and bid on cheap, overlooked keywords and you'll be able to get quality traffic without draining your budget. When you identify the keyword to bid for, include all the targeted keywords (i.e. basketball) in your website as well as synonyms (i.e. NBA), misspellings (i.e. baskatball) and phrases (i.e. basket ball, basketball stuff).
Tip #6: Get famous by submitting articles to free directories and content websites. Cost: Free.
One of my favorite free traffic strategies is writing a couple of info-packed articles and posting them in article directories, online newsletters and free content websites where other people can pick them up, read them or even and republish them.
It's a great way to get inbound links pointing to your website, which is the key to getting you to the top of the search engine listings. Besides, the articles spread the word about your business and help build your credibility as an industry expert.
Here are a few popular content syndication websites:
Launching a pay-per-click advertisement campaign and distributing free content are just two traffic strategies that cost very little and will help your website generate real profit in less than 30 days. Meantime, there are plenty of other online marketing tactics as well, including blogging, social networking and affiliate marketing.
You know what I love about the Internet? It's so unbelievably cheap to get started. How cheap? Well, if you implemented these six steps I listed above, you’ve just spent US$184. And you can keep the balance of $16 for reward day – once you made your first sales online, you can buy yourself a nice dinner to celebrate!
Issue #3: Eight Ways to Get More Customers Choose to Buy from You Without Hesitation!
Have you ever wondered… sometimes when you are thinking about buying a thing or two, you simply just not sure if you should pull out your wallet? That's "purchase anxiety." Most people feel it at some point, especially when they're buying a big-ticket item, or when they're buying something from someone they don’t know.
Online shoppers tend to suffer from purchase anxiety more than offline shoppers. After all, when they buy something over the Internet, it's often a product you've never seen before or sold by someone they’ve never met before.
Here are eight very simple idea you can add to your website that will reassure your visitors you're a reputable business offering quality products or services – and that will get them to click the order button.
1. Testimonials speak a million words.
Nothing reassures visitors like testimonials from real people who can vouch for the quality of your product. And yet so few websites actually have testimonials.
Why? Because they don't ask for them. It can feel awkward to ask people to say nice things about your product or service. But testimonials have so much trust-building power that you should go out of your way to get them.
When you request a testimonial, ask if it's OK for you to include as much information about the testimonial provider as possible. Along with the testimonial, include the person's:
Name
Location
Company
Photo - if possible
URL - if possible
However, this much personal information isn't necessary for every industry. Stick with the norm within your industry.
2. Reassure visitors that their personal information is well protected.
Credit card theft and identity theft are the two biggest concerns that prevent consumers from shopping online, according to market research firm, comShare. Include a privacy policy on your website, reassuring visitors that their personal information will not be distributed or sold.
Plus, process all purchases through a secure server, so that no other computers are ever able to access any of your purchase information. You can go even further and include "security seals" on all the sales webpages, reassuring visitors that you have done everything possible to protect their personal information. Here are some popular security seals; VeriSign, TRUSTe and Hacker Safe.
3. State as it is scenario.
When talking about statistics or results, always state the real figure because it makes your copy seem more credible. For example, if you sell a sales-improvement program, don't say that it helped one client increase sale "more than 200%." Say that it helped her boost sales by 216% in the month of October, 2005. The more accurate you are, the more realistic your claims will be.
4. Statistic and source must go hand-in-hand.
Whenever you include statistics or important data to back up the claims in your statement, be sure to cite your source of that information.
Let's say you market sales-improvement program, and you recently read an article in the Forbes Special Edition about the profitability of business in Asia has declined 35% over the last 12 months. Include that information on your website, and cite the Forbes Special Edition as the source of that information. When you cite a reputable source of information, you borrow their credibility, thus building your own credibility.
5. Full contact information.
Imagine that you go to a website and find a product you want to buy, but you have a few questions you want to ask about it first. But you can’t find the email address or contact information. This website definitely screams "fishy" and will turn visitors off instantly.
Be sure to include your full name, full address, phone number and email address and link to that information from every single webpage. You might even want to invest in a toll-free number because it proves that you'll do whatever it takes to address their concerns and you are financially solid.
6. Include certification from reputable entities.
If you belong to any professional or business organizations, such as the Better Business Bureau, include prominent mention on your "About Us" webpage. Just make sure you don't feature only local organizations because the Internet is a global medium, and if you want to sell to international visitors, you have to come across like an international business.
7. Invite your customers to know you better.
People want to buy from someone, not something. So help them get to know you. Your visitors want to know something about you that relates to your industry. How long have you been in this business? What made you get into it? Why do you enjoy it?
Besides, if possible include a photo of yourself on your "About Us" webpage, as well as a photo of your employees or the office where you work. The effort you put into making yourself seem more real to your visitors will definitely pay off.
8. Follow up promptly.
Purchase anxiety doesn't end with the purchase. There's another syndrome called "post-purchase anxiety." You can alleviate it by keeping your customers informed until your product is in their hands.
Your order confirmation page, confirmation email, shipping information and receipt are all opportunities to let the customer know that you're following up deligently on the case. Even better, you can use each of these to reassure customers that they've made a smart purchase. You can restate the benefits of the product or give them further information about it. Include your contact information again and state that you'll answer all questions.
If you don't already have these elements on your website, add them as quickly as you can. Online shoppers are out there in full force right now. Online retail buying is expected to grow 22.7 percent in the year 2008 and 2009, according to eMarketer.com. Hence, make sure when a shopper land onto your website, he feels confident and comfortable doing business with you.
Dave J is an author of best-seller Secrets Revealed, entrepreneur, speaker and the CEO of DLJR Consultancy, a training firm that has helped more than 800,000 people learn to start, run and market their businesses online and offline. His comprehensive business training covers all aspects of growing any business in any industry (with low-budget) in a step-by-step format. Log on to http://www.davejlive.com/ or contact 016 323 1600 for the latest event schedule.