Top Ten Lessons Learned in Internet Business
by Shelley Lowery
Since starting my Internet business back in 1997, I have
learned many lessons along the way. These lessons have
played a major role in my success, and I'd like to share
them with you.
Lesson #1
Collecting your visitors' email addresses should be one of
your top priorities.
Start collecting email addresses the moment you put your
site up. Developing a list of targeted potential customers
is an absolute must.
Although publishing an ezine is usually the best route to
go, it is not a necessity. You can use your list to send out
web site updates, product updates, or whatever you'd like.
Lesson #2
Your web site can either make or break you.
A professional looking web site will play a major role in
your success. If you aren't secure in your abilities to
design a professional looking site, you will be much better
off hiring a professional.
Lesson # 3
If you want to make a lot of money, you must create a niche.
A niche fills a specific customer need.
People want products and services that fulfill a specific
personal need. If you are the first to fulfill the need,
you'll reap the rewards.
Lesson # 4
Generating web site traffic takes a lot of time and effort.
The key to generating a lot of traffic to your site is
getting your link on as many sites as possible. Sure,
listing your site with the Search Engines is your first
step; however, you must not solely rely on Search Engines to
bring you traffic.
My two biggest traffic generators are as follows:
Affiliate Program - Having your own affiliate program is one
of the best ways to get hundreds, even thousands of links to
your web site.
Providing a Free Product or Service - Providing your
visitors with a free product or service is a great way to
drive traffic to your site.
For example, I offer a free article syndication service.
This service provides free content for web sites branded
with a link to my site.
Lesson # 5
Selling your own products and services is much more
profitable than marketing affiliate programs.
Some of the top Internet sellers include:
• Software
• Information
• Private sites
• Internet services
Lesson # 6
People do not like to be sold. You will be far more
successful if you have a sincere desire to assist your
potential customers. This can be accomplished by writing
informative articles, courses, tutorials, or even providing
advice within discussion forums in your area of expertise.
Trust plays a major role on the Internet. You must build
your credibility with your target audience.
Lesson # 7
Automation can save you hours of valuable time. Although
there are certain areas of business that must be personally
dealt with, there are many areas that can be completely
automated:
• List management
• Customer follow-up
• Welcome messages
• Thank you messages
• Order processing
• Order fulfillment
• Order confirmation
This can be accomplished using autoresponders, scripts and
software programs.
Lesson # 8
Organization is an essential part of developing a successful
business:
• Create a daily work schedule for an organized approach
to each day.
• Use an email program that will filter your messages
into specific folders.
• Organize your computer folders and files for quick and
easy access.
• Create a "Frequently Asked Questions" page to lessen
support requests.
• Create templates for frequently used messages.
• Create a page (residing on your computer) that contains
a list of affiliate programs you're promoting. Include
your log-in information and hyperlinks for easy access.
Lesson # 9
Customer satisfaction and support should be your top
priority.
Lesson # 10
You have to spend money to make money. You must be willing
to invest in your Internet business including:
• Computer
• Internet Access
• Software
• Domain Name
• Web Hosting
• Education (books, courses, etc.)
• Advertising
Lesson # 11 (I know, there were only supposed to be ten, but
this one is important...)
SPAM is a four letter word and will be treated as such.
Although this list is far from complete, these lessons
should provide you with some basic guidelines to assist you
in developing a successful online business.
Copyright © Shelley Lowery 2003. All Rights Reserved
About the Author:
Shelley Lowery is the author of Web Design Mastery - An in-
depth guide to professional web design. And, Ebook Starter -
A complete ebook design kit. Subscribe to Etips and receive
a free copy of the highly acclaimed ebook, "Killer Internet
Marketing Strategies."
mailto:etips-subscribe@ebookstarter.com?subject=subscribe
http://www.web-source.net
You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Online Business Help Articles
More By Developer Shed  developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
You probably have thousands of lines of COBOL code loaded with business intelligence and being used to run your business, along with an army of developers maintaining these applications. Learn how to prepare your applications and developers so you can keep that competitive edge and move to a service-oriented architecture with the IBM Rational Enterprise Modernization solutions. Replay is available for 9 months.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Learn to enable users to both rate existing animations and to combine existing animations into new snippets. This is the third in a series of three tutorials that chronicle the building of a site that enables collaborative discussion and animation building using Domino and OpenLaszlo.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of WebSphere Business Modeler Advanced V6.1.1, IBM’s premier business process modeling and analysis tool for business users that offers process modeling, simulation, and analysis capabilities. IBM WebSphere Business Modeler helps you visualize, understand, and document business processes for continuous improvement.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Download a free trial version of IBM Rational Software Analyzer Developer Edition V7.0 to identify bug defects earlier in the software development cycle. Rational Software Analyzer is an extensible software development solution that reduces the expense of bug-fixes by enabling static analysis code reviews and bug identification very early in the development cycle.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of the Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) Toolkit. The HATS toolkit provides a set of plug-ins for the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform to help you easily extend your legacy applications. HATS makes your 3270 and 5250 applications available as HTML through the most popular Web browsers, while converting your host screens to a Web look and feel and it also enables you to develop new Web, portal, and rich-client applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
In this tutorial, you can learn how to install and configure the IBM Rational Asset Manager Eclipse client, explore the different views in the Asset Management perspective, learn various search techniques, work with existing assets, and submit a new asset.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Learn how Rational Build Forge can extend a simple compile and package build process by adding customization and deployment capability. Go from a manual method to automating: checking for code changes; getting the latest source; compiling and packaging; customizing; copying to and restarting a deployment server; and sending e-mail notification that a new version is available.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference on November 29 at 1:00 pm ET to participate in an interactive discusssion with Grady Booch around architecture and reuse. Get your questions answered!
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
Join this webcast to discover the key requirements for successful change and release management. Learn how to extend your .NET environment to improve productivity and collaboration, and address core problems afflicting team development. In this webcast, we’ll review typical challenges faced by customers and how to resolve them with the IBM Rational Change and Release Management solution, including Rational ClearCase, Rational ClearQuest and Rational Build Forge. Replay is available for 9 months.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
This paper is about the critical role that a discipline called integrated requirements management can play in helping to ensure that your business goals and IT investments are continuously aligned—whether you are sourcing, integrating, building or maintaining software. It also looks at ways that automated IBM Rational® products can work together to help you use requirements in the very best way.
FREE! Go There Now!
| | | |
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
| |
