Auction big-ticket items opportunity.

You have no need to be a guru to try selling big-ticket item that may be anything from ancient coin and cars · to diamonds and mansions. Of course, you don·t have to own them personally. You can just become a reseller and post your eBay lot on behalf of the actual owner.

What you will do need to spend your time on is research. You obviously don·t feel like loosing eBay listing fees, so good research on the subject matter is compulsory.

When conducting research on possible profitability of your eBay listing consider to:

1. Check how similar items are currently being sold.
2. Determine the demand among buyers and bidders of similar items or category by checking how many bids are placed in each category. Look at the visitor webpage counters that majority of listings have by the end of the page.
3. Browse the bidding history. If you spot bidding wars on many listings for similar items – it is a good sign of high demand.
4. How many lots have been successfully ended and what the winning bids were.
5. Estimate the supply. How many sellers are placing their lots, how saturated the category is in general.
6. You may also want to save the best listings and create a collection of the listings closed with high profit margins. Analyze their listings, offers, type of the auction, copywriting style, start price, bidding history and winning bid. You may even want to start from this 6th point in your research in order to determine which items were sold the best before discovering such a big-ticket item to sell for yourself.

If you personally don·t wish participating in listing your lots, supporting and dealing with bidders, there is good news for you. What you need is just to search for power-sellers specializing in items you plan to list and arrange a deal with them. You will act like an intermediary and collect a nice commission just by arranging a deal between the owner of the big-ticket item and an eBay power-seller. This scenario may be more beneficial for you, since your eBay lot will be sold by a professional seller, who knows all ins and outs of this business, who has already built credibility, most likely having an active eBay store and a list of subscribers and customers, so the sale of your item can be really quick and efficient.

When you decide to partner with other eBay seller or do the auctioning yourself, do not forget to take advantage of resources of other power sellers. I·m talking about using their lists of subscribers, customers or ·About Me· pages. You just need to locate sellers with proven track record in your field or category. Then you contact them and ask to mention or announce your complimentary items among their previous customers or at the ·About Me· page for a commission. Just try to leverage the potential of eBay marketplace to the full extent.

If you want to know about a man, who pioneered high-priced eBay sales earning $30K in commissions from a single eBay sale, if you want him to show you exactly how he does it or even if you want him to sell your big-ticket item for you and share his massive profit with you, take a close look at this website: http://www.IWillSellYourStuff.com/

Multi-level JVs.

Next winning opportunity is a variation of partnership that, by the way, may also take place on eBay. The difference lies in the multi-tier scheme of partnership, where you play the role of a middleman between ·provider· and ·promoter·. You also need to have nothing, except for Internet access and email box.

Usually you play the role of either creator of the product/affiliate program owner or its promoter/seller, but the reality is you can “wedge yourself” between these two parties. This is possible with all multi-tier affiliate programs, where you ·occupying· a place yourself between the owner and the actual promoter. After signup, your task is to find entrepreneurs or businesses with powerful means of promoting such products and offer them more beneficial deal in order to solicit them to join affiliate program under you and automatically earn you a 2nd-tier affiliate commission.

If the owner of the product pays out, for instance, 40% on the first and 10% on the second affiliate level, you can try to attract promoters by sharing with them special commission rate, say, 45% at the expense of 5% of your commission. The remaining 5% is yours to keep. As a result, you can create more lucrative terms of partnership for affiliates to motivate then join under you.

Of course, you can always add special bonuses and services to make affiliates join as your referrals or negotiate special terms of cooperation with the product owner, so he can arrange special deals with you to promote his affiliate program. This is a great opportunity of recurring income for every entrepreneur.

Google AdWords Profit Machines.

This is a true money-machine and I·m going to reveal its principle of operation right now, so you can set it up, test and maintain its workability while it earns you hefty checks days and nights on an autopilot.

Google AdWords is a service of a Search Engine context advertising. You create an account by targeting specific or all languages & countries, creating an ad or ads, supplying a number of keywords that will trigger the appearance of those ads, choosing maximum cost-per-click and daily budget.

It may take about 15 minutes. As soon as your account is created and email is confirmed your ads will start rolling on the Google.com and throughout the Google AdSense network.

With the invention of Google AdWords real-time tracking and aggregated summary of your campaigns you now can efficiently test performance of any sales letter or marketing materials, sending quality traffic whenever you want and in volumes you want.

Google AdWords brought down the whole process of marketing and promoting to the matter of several browser windows and a table data, where you can adjust, add and delete almost any parameter of your marketing machine.

As you know the biggest challenge of affiliate promoters is how to attract quality traffic. Google AdWords solves this problem once and for good. You are in full control over what, where and how much visitors to send. What you need is to test keywords, keeping an eye on your advertising budget and your ROI. When your ROI is positive, consider you have a 24/7 money machine which convert traffic into sales without you lifting a finger. You don·t care about creating a product, customer service, maintaining your own affiliate program, newsletters, marketing your business the conventional way or doing affiliate marketing. Your sole responsibility is to maintain, test, probably develop your AdWords campaigns further and cashing them into incoming checks.

For you to have such a machine, your task comes down to locating a hot selling product. Creating a new Google Adwords campaign, choosing proper set of targeted keywords, adding enticing ads and start directing quality traffic anywhere you wish.

The rest depends on your advertising budget. If it is more than $1000, you can afford to setup several campaigns simultaneously and test general keywords starting from broad matching. If you are on a shoestring budget, try selecting untapped market niches and bidding for exact match of your keywords. This budget-saving strategy will show you the winning ad campaigns and reassure affiliate sales before the end of your advertising budget.

AdWords system will mark best-performing keywords for you by impressions and click-throughs as ·Strong·. Keep them, the rest you can delete or replace. If you have weak keywords by click-through, AdWords system will block them and you will have to adjust your list of keywords selection and reactivate your advertising campaigns again.

The universal rule for raising response rates of prospect with any advertising, including AdWords, is targeting. Start from testing keywords by phrase match and mainly exact match. That tactics will guarantee less but quality traffic what is higher conversion and money savings for you. Leave broad keyword matching for general terms to corporate world that is able to spend $100.000 for ·ground testing· purposes. We need to act much more astute.

Want to explore this proven automatic money-making strategy in more detail? Then check out “Google Cash”. It will make your journey from ·nowhere· to ·fat affiliate checks· quite exciting and easy.

Here are another several free services to make you locate better keywords:

http://inventory.overture.com/ – Overture keyword suggestion tool.
http://www.kwmap.com · Keyword Map.

The problem with hosting comes down to the old statute of running ebusiness – that is RESEARCH before ACT! The easiest thing to do online is to pay money, the hardest is to THINK OVER what I’m paying for! That statement is true with hosting also because you can pay, let’s say, $35 monthly for some particular hosting service, without notice that in two mouse clicks there is a hosting offer providing two times better services for $15 per month only, so you will keep on losing services as well as $20 monthly that accumulates up to $240 annually losses as a Fee for not doing hosting research! Besides you should keep your eyes open for very good discounted offers that could save you 30-50% for the first year of payments.

Phase I – Determining NEEDS

1. Estimate your ebusiness basic requirements: total web-space needed, monthly bandwidth (approximate traffic volume multiplied by the most visited web-pages’ total size) and ability to run CGI scripts as a must for every ebusiness.

If it is content rich web-site, example of your first year of hosting may look like this:

• 30-50Mb of disc space;
• 500Mb-1Gb of monthly bandwidth;
• cgi-bin to be able to run your own scripts an offer additional services;

If it is sales web-site, your first year of hosting should be something similar to these requirements:

• 50-300Mb of disc space depending on how much info products you are going to sell and therefore upload on your server;
• 1-3Gb of monthly bandwidth;
• cgi-bin to be able to run your own scripts an offer additional services;

In particular case with one-two ebooks and three-four pages sales web-site, 10Mb of storage space with 500Mb of monthly bandwidth, in general, is more than enough, if you are not going to expand it, so look closely and examine your potential but remember: you ALWAYS have a chance to expand, but you will NOT be able to get your money back if you overpay for services or web-space you don’t need. That is called efficient ebusiness running.

2. Determine additional services that are necessary or preferably to have. Consider among them the following:

• Email aliases
• URL Redirects
• Web Mail
• FTP access/ FTP Accounts
• Web control panel
• Graphic statistics
• Custom error pages
• POP3 Accounts
• Sub-domains
• Autoresponders
• Mailing List(s)
• Password protected directories
• MYSQL database(s)
• Perl
• PHP
• SSI
• and
• marketing info & support
• promotional help (SE submissions, free banner impressions)
• shopping cart
• chat
• forum

3. Plan your hosting expenses beforehand. Usually the amount you pay depends on the amount of services you choose, but not always as there are hosting providers, which offer identical services for totally different money. The saying that “You get what you paid for” is not necessarily true, especially what concerns high profit margins internet business. Although hosting service is not pure online as it involves some physical computer systems to be installed, nevertheless paying more for less is extremely possible. In other words, know your budget.

Phase II. Selecting the ONLY ONE!

1. Those who start looking for proper place or business web-site should have one or several possible hosts in view that you knew or met positive feedback about. For now just make a note of them and put aside, we will come back for them in the step 3.

2. Now it is time to search among hundreds of offers. Accomplish your search by filling online forms at:

http://www.google.com
http://www.hostcompare.com
http://www.findmyhosting.com
http://www.findwebspace.com
http://www.hostsearch.com/search_main.asp

Click on advanced/enhanced search option if available, input all your approximate criteria that we determined at the first phase and here we go! Tens if not hundreds of wannabe your host providers at your computer screen in less than a minute.

3. Narrow your search by selecting first ten (or more if you have the will and spare time) results on every search site page(s). Now you should have 50 (or more) host providers and 2-5 hosting companies you heard and knew about before.

In the next step we will start to compare all of them in order to choose the one that deserves your hard-earned money. This task is being accomplished by simple viewing and testing each of the host providers’ web-site. How to test and what things to pay close attention to are explained below, but first eliminate all duplicate hosts if there are any.

4. Knowing your potential market will help you to differentiate some of the host providers by selecting those who are physically located closer to your market. If your auditory is mainly English speaking people then you should think about choosing servers that are located in US. If you are a German restaurant owner running web-site for local market it is not critical, but preferable to put your web-site to web servers that are located in Germany, not in US. I have mentioned web servers instead of hosting providers on purpose, because the hosting provider itself may be located and registered in one place, but having their servers co-located in other city or country, like my own provider situated in Moscow, but the web-site they host, physically co-located at their US servers. If you provide universal services (like web-design) and shoot for the global markets offering multilanguage site, then physical location of host provider is subsidiary.

5. We start from removing absolute “losers”. The first criterion they won’t pass is the look of their web-site. Is it professional or there are amateurish colors with 3 or more banners? If you think the price of their site design is not even worth $100 you may close their site and forget about them. By doing so, you distinguish profitable host providers from those that don’t even have $300-1000 to invest in the professional look of their web-site. You may not even read what they wrote on their sites as their appearances tell ten times more about their businesses than no words can.

6. Check technical specifications of the hosting servers that are being offered for your shared hosting. Needless to say that Pentium III 450 Mhz with 1 Gb of RAM, for instance, is worse than Pentium IV 2.2 Ghz with 4 Gb of RAM. Outer channels bandwidth and speed can also give you the image of how established the host provider is. You may not need to know all specifications of routers, connectors or other devices, just ask for specific numbers that are easy to compare. That analysis will also tell what hosts are worth further testing and what aren’t.

7. We also need to reassure that our web-site as well as all possible databases won’t be vanished due to power supply overload, virus, fire etc. It is important to check what kind of maintenance conditions they offer. – Do they provide at least 99,5% uptime guarantee? – What kind of independent power supply they offer? – Is there automatic back up option? – Do they have fire and humidity control systems?

Some host providers wouldn’t even bother to tell you about these control systems. You know what to do with them – they go off the list!

8. Next stage is to send them a prewritten email asking for some question. It may be some purposeful inquiry or imaginary one just for testing task. Those who failed to response in 24 hours are off the list also. Remember, that email, due to the “unstable nature” of the internet, may not be even delivered, so write for the second time, if no response again, than they aren’t worth the ink to spend on them by crossing their web-site address out of the list :0) Just carefully tear them out :0)

9. The last test that we run is to check the connection speed of the remaining hosts. You should know how fast the response of your web-site will be.

Two online services would help us in fulfilling this task, namely:

• http://www.netmechanic.com this one will check a particular server within 8 hours and email you the report.
• http://www.webhostdir.com allows to compare 4 hosts simultaneously by entering 4 domain names of respective web-sites.

I would suggest testing each host twice. First time to check the response rate of their corporate web-sites, and second time by comparing speed of their clients’ web-site as there may be a big difference. Just make sure clients are using approximately the same shared hosting plans.

That is all. By now you should have several options: your gold, silver and bronze hosting winners. You can go ahead in setting up your web-site with anyone you prefer more. Don’t lose the rest though, as they may prove to be useful in case some collision occurs with your present “winner”. Last thing. When your web-site is online, don’t just forget to create additional page for providing your new service – expert analysis of selecting web-hosting. :0)

Pavel Lenshin is an Internet entrepreneur, web-developer and marketer. Learn how you can maximize your online profits and get a free access to special profit opportunities and thousands of dollars of ebooks, reports, software, email courses, audio interviews, exclusive programs, resources and enjoy advanced Internet services. Register now free at http://anesbo.com

Tell me your Domain name and I will tell you how successful you are.

For the last couple of months I’ve heard many arguments claiming that my domain name should be based on keywords relevancy, you web-site focused on. Let me ask you why?

The answer is obvious, these SE “experts” project that this tactic will help to raise your Web-site SE ranking on several positions up. In other words, they advise me to pick up a name for my whole Internet Business as well as my Web-Site, with the only aim to have a chance to suite, trick or cheat SEs. Wow, I must be hating my own business!

Let me ask you another question: why there is Coca-Cola instead of Candy Water or Mercedes Benz instead of Comfortable Car? Do you still want to name your eBook selling Web-Site something similar to eBookSell.com instead of a real Brand name for your business? Don’t you know why there is Google.com, Amazon.com and Yahoo.com instead of GreatSE.com, Bookshop.com or Index.com? Imagine that you are a real car manufacturer. Are you going to name your car “Fast Car” or give some really unique name?

I may guarantee you that these keyword tricks will bring you nowhere. While keyword based domain name or other tactics like expressive use of <h1> tags instead of <p> may raise the relevancy for that particular keyword in the short-term prospective, you cannot rely on these tricks forever, because if you do, other guy will outsmart you simply by having more web-pages with more valuable information and your <h1> tags along with white text on white background tricks won’t help.

Don’t also forget that SE indexing algorithms are constantly changing and what proved to working yesterday, may not work today.

Besides HTML code may be easily changed, bad domain name cannot, at least, for a year, so you had better give your business a domain name it deserves, with a strong Brand and USP from the very beginning! There is no brand in “eBook Selling Site” or “Best Search Engine Traffic”, no one will ever remember you! So be smart and chose the right name for your e-business. Done with that!

2. Next. No arguments that your business name should be relatively short. Your domain name does not differ, it should be the same or even shorter. If your domain consists of three or more words try to use appropriate acronyms or abbreviations. Don’t suggest you to use “hyphens”, “misspellings” or “numbers” (if your official business name doesn’t have them). These “eye-soaping” won’t positively influence your business image also.

Is it difficult to create another “Google”? No. Is it difficult to imagine “Overture” instead of PPC Search Engine? No, billion times no. What you need is time, wit and imagination. If you don’t have something of the mentioned, then ask someone who has. Tell you the truth, I have very small vocabulary, so for my next project I will search Webster, Latin dictionary or try to ask friends about some useful ideas on that subject. Just make sure your domain wouldn’t be translated as something stupid on the language of the country you are planning to work with. Can it be even easier?

3. Third point. How to check what you domain name is worth? Imagine that your business has reached a billion dollar status, you have a corporate skyscraper with an extremely big corporate flag 100-by-100 meters wide (328-328 feet wide) that is hanging on the very top of your building with the name of your business on it. So does the name that you have imagined suit that corporate flag of a billion dollar corporation?

The domains like Amazon.com, Overture.com, Google.com, eBay.com or even GoDaddy.com are perfect examples of what direction you should move. My-Cool-PPC-Search-Engine.com or BestOnlineBooks.com are the worst examples of the domain names you can ever imagine.

Answer another question. Does your domain leave some “taste” in the minds of your visitors, or it is “just another one” name? Does your domain as well as WS transfer any hidden or obvious message or is it “flat” and simple as a log? Remember: your branding policy of the WS and Domain name should provoke emotions, thought, curiosity or desire. PayPerClickSearchEngne.com is pay per click search engine. I know that, you know that, what next? Overture.com tries to make your subconscious imagination work. It has unique abstract inner meaning. Wake me up in the middle of the night and I will tell you that Overture is the best PPCSE, despite the fact that Overture’s meaning has very slight connection to what a PPCSEs really are.

4. The domain name you choose shouldn’t offend your auditory and be liked by You. In other words, try to avoid “angels” in dealing with public and make your name you are proud of. The last notice is very important. Everything that is connected with your company even including the look of PC you are working on should arouse positive and pleasant emotions only. You should be proud of your own business like the majority of Americans are proud of The United States.

Well, like I said, your business goes the same way it is called. Are you fond of your name? I hope you are.

Usability is what makes your WS pleasant to deal with.
While everyone defines personally for her(him)self how to make design nice to look at, memorable (in respect to branding) and serve customer/business needs in the best way possible, the technical side of usability can and should be corrected using the standard requirements.

Source code Optimization

Firstly about the four problems that come to my mind with “dirty” HTML source code:

1. Potential cross-browser conflicts as some particular useless Tags (a piece of HTML source code) may be neglected by one browser but create some visual errors, when viewed in other browser.
2. The more useless HTML Tags web-page has, the more drive space it occupies.
3. As the derivative of the previous problem, the more size of that web-page, the longer it takes to visitor to load and view it.
4. Search engines like plain and clear textual information for easy search and scan. By having a lot of useless pieces of HTML code, you prevent SE spiders to proper index your web-pages. The result is the obvious decreasing of your Search Engine rankings. That is why Meta Tags correcting is not the only thing you should pay attention to.

Statistic shows that more then 85% of all WSs online demands graphics or HTML code optimization. That is actually a common problem, the core of which lies in the use of highly popular “home” web editors like FrontPage or other.

The “winner” among the worst is well-known Netscape Composer, due to the extremely “dirty” HTML code it generates while editing old or creating new web-pages. If you have ever used Composer and no one have “cleaned” those web-pages afterwards, they definitely contain a lot of HTML “garbage”.

Based on my own experience every 50Kb Netscape Composer’s web-page can be easily optimized to the 40Kb file size or less, as a simple result of the deleting junk HTML tags. If you implement Cascade Style Sheet and HTML compressor you will get the same, but “clean & shiny” web-page totaling 25-30Kb (40-50% space savings) with the enhanced visual effects.

The example above shows saving on a single web-page, but if we speak in terms of 50-60 pages WS, that occupy (without graphics) 3-5Mb of hard drive space, the potential savings as a result of HTML optimization may reach 1-3Mb.

So if you are experiencing the lack of hard drive space with your hosting provider, the solution to that problem lies in simple WS optimization. It doesn’t only save a lot of space, but, as we know, eliminates potential cross-browser mistakes, helps SE spiders to properly index your web-pages and make your visitors’ surfing more quick and smooth and therefore pleasant.

Graphics Optimization

When we speak about poorly optimized graphics we get two problems: more occupied space and worse load time. Given that the first obstacle may be overcome by acquiring personal server with several Gigabytes of hard drive space, the letter problem will continue to exist as the majority of web visitors have low speed dial-up connection.

To make your graphics optimized on the basic level, you should save it in the proper graphic format. Many popular pictures of eBook covers can be easily optimized simply by re-saving .JPG format into .GIF or vice versa depending on particular file. That tactic alone can bring 15Kb file to occupy 7-10Kb in the matter of 2 min.

The basic math shows that 10 optimized pictures (without HTML optimization) on a web-page are capable to decrease the overall size of it from 120Kb to 70Kb with no visual loss in the quality of picture. Are you aware of statistics how many visitors leave your site just because they are tired to wait until all pictures load? It doesn’t mean that you have to simply delete these pictures completely as some people suggest, what it does mean is that they are better to be optimized because in case with eBook covers, they proved to triple selling potential and their absence will be hardly compensated by new visitors.

To choose the right format, follow one simple rule:

“If the target picture is more likely to be a photo, with many colors, unshaped objects and different lights, this file should be saved in .JPG format. If, on the contrary, a picture is more likely to consists of a number of vector objects like circles, triangles, squares, doesn’t have too many colors or similar to some drown comics, then .GIF format is the best to use.”

If it is hard to determine, then save it in both formats and compare quality/size ratio. Not much work, big effect.

Having semi- or fully professional graphic editors will allow you to get even better results by selecting compression rate, smoothness, sharpness of edges – if we speak about .JPG format; or palette, colors, rate of transparency, animation features etc. – if we deal with .GIF format.

Today’s technological opportunities are vast, so it is you to decide how deeply you want to “dive in”.

Cross-Browser & Screen Resolution optimization

The numbers are the following:

• 2% have outdated 14” with 640*480 pixels in width and height respectively.
• 49% of web-surfers use 15″ monitors with preferable “standard” screen resolution of 800*600 pixels;
• 45% surf the web with 17″ monitors with reasonable 1024*768 resolution;
• 4% of users enjoy 18-19″ monitors with 1152*864-1280*1024 screen settings.

What should these numbers tell you? The very simple thing – if you created the WS on your 15″ monitor, don’t assume that it will look as good on other monitors as on yours.

Let me draw several notes here about the tendency that monitor market will follow in the nearest future.

First is that all 14″ monitors are gradually going to their deserved eternal rest. Even the share of notebooks with 15″ TFT screens growing exponentially. There are even several new versions with 16″ active matrixes. Don’t also forget that notebooks’ 14″ TFT screen have almost the same diagonal inches as usual 15″ CRT (Cathode-ray tube) monitors.

Secondly, the number of 15″ monitors is also decreasing, due to growing number of 17″ monitor owners that is the third point.

One sentence conclusion of the above statistics is that your WS should look fine, at least, under 800*600 and 1024*768 resolutions. This is a market demand to your WS and, as we know, you better not joke with The Market.

Without going deep into theory, there are two ways:

• more simple;
• more complex.

Both correct, both satisfy the demand above, but the latter way, given it is more complex, usually perfectly fits any screen resolution, whether it is 14″ or 21″ and more favorable to WS space usage.

The easier way would be to make the borders of your web-page (tables of your web-page) to be fixed with certain number of pixels.

The most popular settings are something between 650 to 750 pixels just to fit that 800 pixels width screen under the most popular 15″ monitor 800*600 resolution. If you go that way your web-page will have the same look under different sets of resolutions.
If we try to see it at 14″ monitor with 640 pixels in width, the unpleasant horizontal scroller would appear because our fixed setting in 700 pixels is wider then 640 and it just won’t fit in it. If, on the other hand, we look at our imaginable site under 1152*864 or 1280*1024, it will look too narrow, as it will occupy only 60% of the screen width (our 700 in comparison to 1200 screen pixels width).

Why does this designing way simpler? You just won’t have any problems building it: no need for resolution or cross-browser optimization, as fixed pixels are read correctly under almost every browser.

The more complex way is to have width of one or several HTML tables columns on your site to be set in percents like 75% or 100% and, therefore, poses the ability to automatically broaden or narrow according to the specified percents, depending on what screen resolution the site is being viewed under.

If you have 600*800 screen settings (the screen width is 600 pixels) and one of the table width of your site is set to 100%, then this particular table along with all included text and graphic will narrow to 600 pixels, if we set the monitor to 1200*1024 resolution, i.e. having 1200 pixels wide, our site’s table will stretch to the specified 100%, in that case, 1200 pixels.
That’s why it looks more attractive under different resolutions but demands additional optimization, including cross-browser optimization, as Netscape Navigator browser has some problems with proper interpreting of percent settings in multi column tables. Which way to choose depends on the tasks and your preference.

I wish you endless creativity and no more then 70Kb per page

I don’t want to argue that statement about the importance of copywriting, on the contrary, I think that it is totally true, but under one condition – your Web-Site (WS hereafter) is already implied to make your visitors feel, at least, comfortable.

It could never be counted, how many times I closed down the browser without reading a single word, just because of the amateurish and clumsy look those WSs had.

No need to emphasize on importance of the professional WS. It is obvious, at the same time you won’t read there, that web-design is everything and that professional sales letter or text message is nothing, because it is like answering the question – what is better to have skin or heart cancer? To my mind, it is better to be totally healthy.

Business WS usually plays the role of virtual office, shop, informational dep., marketing dep. and service dep. It is a main representative and the core of your business – the final proof, the image of your company is based on.

What it is all about

The target is set – to make your WS as good as it can possibly be. Here I pointed the crucial pillars of designing a professional looking WS. You will not find there basic HTML teaching or how to use particular web-editor. The knowledge of HTML will help, but is not compulsory, as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors will make all HTML coding work “behind the scene” for you.

You require general understanding of what HTML is and ability to use one or several WYSIWYG web-editors, that is three hour learning process. The feeling of style and taste is also advisable; otherwise you will have to consult a designer.

The problem with design “How to..” is that WS design is 90% creative work, where is no two identical WS (unless copied), that is why there cannot be any step-by-step study, the same way there is no step-by-step study on how to paint a masterpiece paint.

What we can teach is how to “hold a brush”, but it is you, who should paint “Mona Lisa” and become “Leonardo da Vinci”.

What your WS should look like?

• Stylish. Consider it as an exterior and interior of your whole off-line business premises, starting from hall (main-index web-page) and ending with your personal office (“about me” web-page). It has to have its unique “feel” and style. Don’t also forget about branding features your WS represent.
• Clear structure. Imagine a shopper who wants to make a purchase at your offline store, but in order to enter it, he has to go through warehouse, service department and all kinds of office premises. Don’t allow your web visitor feel like that shopper.
• Harmonically allocated design elements like graphics and text. The WS is united entity and your brand. Every element on the WS is to be blend with “exterior”, no separated elements or graphics like a number of flashy banners.
• High usability standards and complete WS optimization including clear HTML code and optimized web graphics that are similar to clear shop. The more “dirt” your web-pages contains, the more time it will take to load them, the more potential errors it may show in different browsers, and the harder it will be for Search Engine spiders to index your WS. We will discuss these issues later on.
  Pay also attention to broken links, as it is similar to wall behind the door of your off-line shop. Let your visitors find good resources with your help, rather than an “Error 404 Page not found”.
• Absence of grammatical errors. It concerns grammatical correctness of textual information. The importance of correct grammar is clear, no one wants to deal with uneducated people, especially if they represent businesses.

What programs you will need

First of all you will need to equip yourself with right “armament”, that are mostly WYSISWG (What You See Is What You Get) web-editors. The download links and short description you can find below:

• Macromedia Dreamveawer – considered to be the best WYSIWYG HTML editor. Ideal for beginners as well as professional users. Anything you can only imagine has already been included :0) 30 days trial version.
• EzyPage – very simple drag&drop web-page creator for beginners. Although it has several very interesting features build in like dropdown menu or scrolling table. Free distribution.
• Stepzilla – the software’s motto – step by step to the web – tells everything for itself.
• 1st page 2000 v.2 final – very pleasant HTML editor for beginners as well as advanced webmasters. Has ability to choose the interface that will be more suitable. Available HTML cleaning option, XML converter, build in FTP-client and preview function. A lot of ready to use Javasript, VBScript, DHTML, Perl applications. The software is being distributed for free.
• Hot Dog Professional – three HTML editors – HotDog Junior for kids, PageWiz for beginners and Professional ver.6 for advanced users. Convenient interface with easy to access HTML functions. Includes CSS editor, checker for tag errors and many others. All three editors allow to download 30-days trial version.
• CoffeCup HTML editors – another offer with several versions of softwares for beginners as well as advanced users. Pre-made JavaScript applications libraries, Flash effects, font creator, HTML code cleaner, FTP-client, and many more. Collection of web-pictures, backgrounds, icons. Available 30-days trial PRO or free version.
• AceHTML 5.0 Pro – professional HTML editor. DHTML è JavaScript libraries. Build in CSS editor, HTML, JavaScript, CSS checker, supports XHTML, XML, Perl and WML documents. HTML code optimizer, link checker. Available 30-days trial version.

Pillars of proper designing

Tasks defining

You next step after setting up the appropriate web-design program is to set the list of tasks your site should solve.
You should answer the following questions:

1. Are your WS a sales letter or a content rich project? Depending on your answer you have or don’t have to pay attention to the structure and flexibility of navigational menu, as it may bring new challenges, as your content-rich WS will grow. Consider to reserve WS space to future informational blocks like announcements, exclusive offers, visitors voting, polls, that you may like to include sometime in future. Don’t make the page layout look too tight, as you will require redesigning the whole page just to insert a small table for visitors’ voting.
2. What kind of integrated services you are planning to use? Whether it is going to be shopping cart, discussion board, chat or separate section totally devoted to the WS newsletter, it should fit overall site layout and design. Think in prospective, as it will take several hours now, but avoid several weeks of headache in the future. Make sure that the foundation of your online empire will bear all possible additional storeys, without need of demolishing the whole “building” and strengthening the foundation.
3. What market sector your WS belongs to in general and what product/service you are going to offer in particular? If your WS is an entertainment portal, full of flash games, casino offers and reviews of upcoming PC games, it is obvious that design and layout plays extremely important role as a representative of more than 50% of all information. Be sure that boring graphics in that case would cut the roots of your WS growth. If, on the other hand, you are working at corporate business-to-business online sector (B2B), there is absolutely no need in complex graphics elements or flashy stars in the top-left corner. Online businesses always experience lack of time, therefore, they need quick answers of who you are, what you are and why are you, rather than waiting till your welcome 300Kb flash clip will load. The answer to efficient finding partners among businesses is textual and to the point information that is easy to access and that is, usually, represented in business white-gray-black color scheme.

Visually finished

Anybody can do that, although the broader imagination you have, the simpler it will be. What you need is comfortable seat, paper and a pen. Put your feet on the table, close your eyes and imagine your WS.

Let me only tell you one of my favorite jokes concerning technique mentioned above.

“There was a group of foreign visitors coming to see a very prosperous and profitable company.
At the end of their excursion one of the visitors asked their guide:
- You know, your company is really perfect, with the best technology I’ve ever seen, everybody is working very hard, but, tell me, who is that man in the biggest room on the top floor doing nothing but relaxing on the soft armchair with his feet crossed on the table?
- Oh, that man came up with the idea last year, that earned us $1.000.000, and, as far as I remember, during that time his feet were also on the table.”

So follow this man and don’t allow anybody disturb you during this work!

Don’t make any mistakes about it. You may be surprised, but it is the most challenging and crucial part of your WS creation. The brighter efforts you put into your paper, the more beneficial result you will get. No need for degree in painting, just basic elements on paper as a background of your future WS building, the rest in mind.

Don’t be afraid to experiment! It’s a pleasant time spending anyway. Remember – all great works of all times are considered to be masterpieces, only because they, firstly, perfectly reflect the depth of their creators’ souls and, secondly, they are unique in their nature. There is no masterpiece based on well-known standards. They are good in, let’s say, decreasing production costs, but they are not welcomed in the art creation process, which the design surely is.

On the other hand, you should always keep in mind that the experiment ends exactly when the web-surfer disappointment starts.

Elements

The key point, while visualizing your full color WS, is to decide what and where will you place 3 basic elements:

1. Header.
2. Navigational menu.
3. Space for main text.

The following list represents possible WS elements that you consider to have as a result of previously conducted “Task Defining”. Designer should also reserve a proper place and harmonically blend them with the rest of WS elements:

1. Banner ads;
2. Menu mirror at the bottom;
3. Additional text for news column, announcements, testimonials etc.;
4. Email forms, visitor polls, questionnaire etc.;
5. Any other items you consider to include.

It must be stressed that all the main elements of the WS as well as any other WS items, which should be added at your sole discretion ought to be put in mind while visualizing, and therefore written down on paper to be sure there is no forgotten element left behind. If it occurs at the next stage you will have to start from the very beginning as there is no way to move further. So don’t quadruple your work with your own hands. Make sure you have put every “present” into the box you want to receive on Christmas. ;0)

WS Structure and layout

Draw the scheme of your WS structure. How you are planning to arrange, link and create logically relations between sections or stand alone web-pages. It is easy to navigate four-page sales letter WS, but everything changes when we are exploring 100 spontaneously linked WS. It is easier to get out of Sahara desert rather than to find what you need.

Your navigational structure could be linear or functional. There are unlimited number of variations, just pay close attention and follow one simple rule:
” The more difficult for you to write a WS structure, the more difficult it will be for potential user to navigate it!”

It doesn’t depend on number of web pages rather then logical sequence and connection of different parts or sections of your site.

Colors

I’ve also read numerous times, that Headlines is what the visitor sees first, when comes to your site. Wrong! The first thing a surfer sees on the WS, while it loads, is the color and, sometimes, design appearance. Don’t underestimate the importance of color influence. With the help of color play you can easily create a feeling of excitement or grief even before s/he will see the first letter of your Headline.

One note should be also mentioned: try, if possible, to avoid main colors – green, red, yellow, blue. They are very Day-Glo and very annoying while using them in the company Logo sometimes considered to be enticing.

Compare this color combination:

The left color scheme is more aggressive, when the right one is more soft and “polite” to your customer’s perception. By choosing letter scheme you don’t, at least, make your visitor be irritated. What I did is changed the hue and added some dark to the red, yellow and blue color, while made green to be brighter. Just experiment with hues and brightness and you will get the color you need.
Follow this rule if you are not intend to sell clown noses in the circus tent. :0)

Text color is also ought to match the background color. Given that it is better once to see, than 100 times to hear, just look at the example below and everything will clear up:

(to be continued)

• No direct maintenance expanses.
• No overhead expanses on additional producing, copying and distribution.
• Truly unlimited supply.
• Relatively easy and quick ways of delivering.

Don’t you think that these features are forming God Blessed Business? There are lots of opportunities of dealing with tangible products using the power of Internet through wholesale distributors and drop-shippers, but the perspective of dealing with not only customers but the suppliers and of dealing with not only payment chargebacks, but a tangible product chargebacks as well, makes this opportunity not so appealing to the online business newcomer. Besides the profit margin and therefore your income on any info product is always higher.

BUSINESS MODELS ONLINE.

So the conclusion of starting new informational online business is obvious. Let us quite briefly examine the most popular opportunities here. Among them are:

1. MLM.
2. Affiliate programs.
3. Private eBusiness.

1. MLM “opportunity”.

The word “opportunity” in the headline of that section was taken at the quotes because MLM is more likely to be the opportunity for its owner rather then participants. But let us look into it step-by-step.

One of the alluring prospects for any online newcomer is the target of “being-your-own-boss”. Internet is a virtual economy, with virtual employers, employees, virtual corporations, partnerships, and private businesses. MLM has its own organization structure with respective bosses, administration, clerks and so on. The shocking fact about it is that the people are eager to change their 8-hour off-line job to 12-hour on-line job for the same but virtual boss, usually to be paid much less! But wait, that’s not the end of the story. MLM members, as we know, actually pay their “bosses” for the “right” to work for them. Do you imagine paying your “off-line” boss $20-70 monthly only for the right to come to your office and work for him? Why not? If you and your colleagues pay that money, your boss will be twice more kind with you than any up-line MLM team leader. Try :0) A very good question to ask in any business endeavor is: What am I paying for?

Efforts to take, money to spend:

1. You are not supposed to run and support a personal web-site (page) promoting MLM, but these chances of success, in that case, are greatly decreased.
2. Recruiting people is crucial and it forms the main business task you should fulfill. In other words you have to sell “virtual MLM success”, what is much more harder than selling any real services or products that have their perceived value. Product sales are subsidiary in any MLM.
3. Usually, your right to earn in MLM will include entry and/or monthly fees. Plus buying their products is also, quite often, a must for working and earning in any MLM. Your earnings are divided between you and your up-line. The more greedy mouth you have above, the less will rest for yourself :0).
4. MLM participant is more likely to be an MLM employee, who should keep on referring people to see any residual income at least in 3 months, more often, a year. If the participant enters and starts working on a second MLM “opportunity” his or her work in the first MLM won’t have any progress.

2. AFFILIATE PROGRAM opportunity.

Affiliate programs are the entry level of cooperation in business. The highest (and the most profitable) level of partnership between businesses is join ventures. Next step is only to business acquisition or merger. Business cooperation takes its roots from the times of primitive communal society, when a hunter made a bargain with a fisherman to provide him with a part of his pray for the share of the fisherman’s catch.

Now it is a worldwide practice to attract third party sellers for the share of generated profit in order to extend sales volume focusing on the new products development or clients servicing.

The affiliate seller in that “game” is also in funds. By selling other people’s product affiliate earns a commission without hassle on producing, managing and servicing anything.

Some features which were considered to be the benefits of the MLM business like commissions on sales made by referred members of the third level have been implemented in some affiliate programs, creating so-called two- or three-tier programs, but in contrast with MLM the business partner isn’ t obliged to pay membership or any other fees.

Efforts to make, money to spend:

1. You are not supposed to run and support a private web-site (page) promoting third party product, but the chances of success, in that case, are greatly decreased.
2. Your earnings strictly depend on sales you and, sometimes, your referred affiliate have made. The percentage is usually not less then 5% and not more then 60% per sale. The more retail price is, the less commission percentage you will have. The most popular commission now is 20%-50% on info products.
3. No need to pay entry or monthly fees. You as well as affiliate program owner may make additional investments on services or products, but they do not directly concern your affiliate business cooperation.
4. Any affiliate operates as an independent business entity and has a database of potential customers, may result in simultaneous marketing of as many affiliate products as wanted, earning commissions on them all.

3. PRIVATE eBUSINESS.

As many times marketing experts have said, you will find no “Guru”, who build their internet empire by marketing exclusively other people’s products or participating (not owning) in a MLM. 99,9% of them have their own products or services to sell. Only having 100% of private rights could bring you 100% of profits on any effort you will make. Especially when you’re at the beginning of business highway. Internet is a perfect workplace where your income exactly equals to the work input you’ve made. You have full control not only on product or service to sell, but something more vital, credibility building and creating the community of loyal customers. Once again, especially, when you are setting up your first eBusiness.

Efforts to make, money to spend:

1. You have to create (or order) business web-site (page) as a representation, advertisement, selling and customer-servicing platform of you business.
2. Your earnings strictly depend on the sales you’ve made. Any sales bring you 100% income. The setting up of affiliate program, based on your offer, could also increase your market and profit exposure allowing you to create indirect income.
3. Any dime you will spend building your own empire is an investment in yourself and your business. It means that for any monetary unit you will get a service or product, which brings the actual value for you and your business. Unlike consumer spending, any investment is intended to earn you the interest with time.
4. Private business operates as an independent business entity. Automation of business processes could make your hands free for creating second, third etc. business entities or divisions. The more products you sell the more residual income you will have.

NEWCOMER eBUSINESS PROSPECT

Without any doubt private business beats any other opportunity on the first step of wealth building on the net.

The most reasonable steps should be:

1. Setting up private venture or partnership to double the efforts as well as profits. If your share in partnership structure is 50%, you may probably earn initial 100% on your work as the income of your business is also supposed to double.
2. Long-term online incorporation implies stages of popularizing your product, trade mark, creating virtual community of grateful customers, and spreading positive business image.
3. Establishing your own affiliate program to maximize market exposure and profits.
4. Joining third party affiliate programs that reflect your best interest and promote their products to existent customers for immediate results.
5. Having residual cash flow you may consider joining MLM. You have customers and business income to spend. But in that stage more astute action to take is to organize your own MLM venture based on products you sell. In that way you will not get “hurt” by spending money on an up line and guarantee you true MLM “success”. What should be thought over here is the possibility of hurting your clients what, to my mind, isn’t worth any MLM income you may have.

Accomplish these steps and you will guarantee financial freedom for yourself, your closest relatives and children for many years ahead. Start your own business by investing necessary time and money in you and your business. If you do, the life you are dreaming about will find you very soon.

Without going too far let’s use any popular web-site directory and look for online magazines or just theme-focused web-sites. You will quickly grasp what I mean particularly. They usually consist of many stand-alone pages on certain topic related to the main web-site subject. Generally they have a complex and deep directory structure, in the contrast to the e-commerce shops complexity, which are mainly more technical rather then contextual.

Although I should clearly emphasize that these two strategies are the “backbones” of all variations of existed models, it’s understood that it is a big temptation not to include some product sales letter into already known and established content rich web-site or not to expand your already highly profitable product sales web-site or e-shop with a very good content material related to the topic.

Back to our “backbone” #2.

Their TASKS are to:

1. Provide a visitor with information s/he is looking for in Quality, Quick and Qualified way, implementing, therefore, my rule of “3-Qs”.
2. Answer at least the majority of visitor’s questions. If this task is not successfully accomplished your visitor is lost to continue exploring other web-sites for answers, that haven’t been found at your site.
3. Make your visitor spend more time at your web resource, as it will mean that s/he is highly interested in information you arranged.
4. Make a time-spending for anyone who comes by to be pleasant. That is why the structure, web-site navigation, content and its representation are much more important in comparison with the site that utilizes “buy or goodbye” policy.
5. Build long-term online credibility at the expanse of quick profits. Any online sales are subsidiary and shouldn’t be considered as target number one.

FEATURES:

• Presentation of the quality information concerning given subject.
• Complex navigation structure.
• Relatively big web-site in terms of occupied space.
• Demands a lot of support efforts.

How long is the way?

Much longer then putting sales-letter web-site. Credibility and online community respect cannot be built on 2-3 web-pages of information and 2-3 weeks of work. If you are serious about your online presence and you can afford spending several months exclusively for creating content rich web-site disregarding the time needed to collect that information and gain necessary skills and knowledge first. That is the way you should go through.

SEs, on the contrary to the “buy or goodbye” concept web-sites, are also your allies in that e-business game. They will like you because you help them deliver what they are looking for – information. As a result you can save a lot of advertising funds, by creating keywords attractive web-pages and focusing on high SE rankings, therefore getting free traffic non-stop. Good SE placement and indexes-directories listing are the number one priority, and fortunately to you, this task will be accomplished indirectly and without much work from your side. How? Just by developing and delivering high-quality info, you will discover very soon that your web-site is ranked in the top 10.

The developing process comprises the creation of quality content, writing and publishing your own as well as third party articles, offering info products like ebooks, video, audio or just text files, creating autoresponder courses, sending newsletters, ezines, setting up a discussion board, running online surveys, online interactive games etc. It seems like serious work, but $15.000 monthly is also serious money, isn’t it?

PROS:

1. A quick way to build yourself a reputation of expert in the field of activity given.
2. Vast possibilities to create a loyal online community.
3. More fundamental way to establishing online presence.
4. Steady and growing auditory equals to steady and growing monthly cash flow.

CONS:

1. Relatively more time consuming and longer way to make “first money”.
2. Will demand writing skills as well as certain level of knowledge and skills to be able to share it with others.

Get THE MOST of it.

With what has already been said, the time seems to be of the most value. To be efficient you should strive to save time, plan your work and increase productivity. It is very easy to be distracted when building content-rich web-sites. As it was told numerous times: “Internet is a huge distracter”. I don’t want to repeat over again but you should stick to the plan and be focused.

In previous article I suggested to start publishing online newsletter, e-magazine or offering e-business courses – anything to create a steady number of visitors. With “stay with me” web-site concept it is not advisable, it is obligatory, so the most valuable advise here would be to automate as much business processes as possible.

You’ve got to have software to automate your web-site updates, software to keep all your content, subscribers’ databases etc. These 3-5 programs are the basis of running your effective business. The rest depends solely upon your desire to achieve success.

On the contrast to that meaning, I could give you numerous examples of content rich websites with two to three pages of 5-10 power articles and a site that consists of 20-50 pages of blatant sales letters.

That is why the main idea behind any “mini-site” is not a number of pages, rather then strict and unconsciously straightforward direction towards product/service selling. That is why any e-shop will meet “mini site” requirements as they are nothing more then a number of sales letters directed to turn the usual surfer into the buyer as quickly as possible.

Their TASKS are to:

1. Present the visitor with a product/service;
2. Reassure her/him that it is the best offer in the whole universe;
3. Show them how they managed to live all that time without their product/service;
4. Give them a guarantee that they will even be able to “fly to the Moon” tomorrow, if they buy what we offer today;
5. and close the sale. If needed, capture your visitor’s email and explain for the next 5 days, that they are losing their unbounded wealth with each day of purchase delay.

FEATURES:

• The only purpose is to close the sale.
• Main income is generated by direct web-site sales. Indirect income streams through additional services, except all kinds of partner programs, are subsidiary.
• Demands integrated e-commerce solutions to be able to serve smoothly all volumes of sales.
• Relatively high business process automation.

How long is the way?

Absolutely short. If you will come to one of those giant e-shops and be amazed by the structure and service complexity, you would better not, as their core consists of a big number of sales pages with a bunch of additional services. If you have already seen yourself in the chair of President or, at worst, Vice-president of such online giant reseller, all you need to do is setup one page sales letter web-site and then grow, grow and grow.

If your name is similar to Bill Gates or George Soros, in other words, you have a famous First and Last Name to sell as a trade mark, the only job left for you is to announce another “Killer Breakthrough Product” and emphasize for several times, that it is Yours. Then wait while a flood of people tear your offer apart leaving you all their money. They don’t usually pay any attention to what you are actually selling.

If you are not so lucky and you don’t also have rich content to prove that you are as good as your “neighbor” – Mr. The Best, you will have to spend your main business budget on promotion/advertising.

That is why PPC (pay-per-click) and PPS (pay-per-subscriber) are the main options, where you should spend your hard-earned “American presidents”. eZine promotion shouldn’t be also forgotten.

Be sure that Search Engines won’t like you from the very beginning and you will spend years of hard work and promotion before your TM is established and Search Engines are nothing left, but to admit that your site is really “Cool”. The reason is simple. No relevant content = no relevant SE placement.

PROS:

1. Almost no preparation time. Just put it on the net. The sooner, the better.
2. As mentioned above – automation leads to hands down business as a result.
3. Quick servicing. “Buy or Goodbye” concept.
4. Relatively quick money.

CONS:

1. Demands sustainable advertising funds as the main source of new prospects, unless you are a well-known expert with several thousands of grateful clients. SEs are not your friends until you are prosperous and recognized as a online reseller.
2. Small visitor return rate as a result of total or partial content absence.
3. Harder conditions for credibility building.

Get THE MOST of it.

To minimize Cons and maximize Pros you should start working on additional services and offers like publishing your own e-magazine or offer a free email course, offering free consultations, implement viral marketing strategies – everything you can do to make your visitor come to your site again.

That tactic makes your site more similar to the websites that utilize strategy #2. Meanwhile I can stress that these “excessive” efforts, on the one hand, make your hands bounded by additional work, but on the other hand, create a relatively steady website auditory by sustaining a dialog with prospects and therefore more attractive circumstances for recurring sales and maximizing profits.