Heard Of Copy Writing For The Web Yet? Then Keep Going

Although many people seem to think that writing effective copy for the web is easy, it isn’t.  So if you want to ensure that your readers and your customers understand how your website works and what it can do for them, you need to produce good copy-writing for it.

In this course, we will look at the basics of producing good copy-writing for the web.  But before we start there are a number of things that you should remember.

First, people do not read a website in the same way that they would read printed material.  In fact, there are three characteristics which affect how a web user will react to the online content of a site.

It is important to remember that web users are active, not passive.  So if they don’t find a reason for staying on a site, then they will leave it.  Sometimes a person will leave 15 seconds after they have actually gotten there.  So if your text is too long, then they are less likely to read it.  So if you want a web user to believe what you have to say, you must be able to back up the hype. 

In order for any web copy to be effective, it must take into account the characteristics mentioned above.

What is most important of all when looking at copywriting for the web, is not to underestimate the importance of the basics.  If you just jump straight into it you may find yourself in trouble, and your site not being as effective as it should be

How To Market Your Online Business

How do You Go About Marketing Your Online Business?

In the final chapter of this book, we will look at various ways in which you can market your online business.  The reason for marketing an online business is in order to get that all important traffic to visit your site.  This traffic consists of visitors, who will then become your customers and start purchasing your product or service from you.

The first thing you need to do is learn how to optimize your website so that it will start getting ranked in the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN.  The sooner you do this the faster it will get ranked and the sooner the traffic will start to appear at it.  A great way of doing this is by investing in either a book, E-book or Ecourse on how to optimize your site, or you could try some of the following methods instead.  The best way in which you can optimize your website is by ensuring you have back links to your site.  This is where you have links to your site placed on other sites through various different methods.  Below we provide you with some that are useful in order to get those all important back links to your website.

Link Exchanges

This is where you exchange links with other websites that have complimentary products or services to your own.  It will not only give you direct traffic from the link, but will help to increase your pursuit for getting ranked higher in search engines.

Write Articles

It is important that the articles you write are interesting and full of useful information regarding your niche.  This is probably one of the best ways around for gaining more traffic to your website.  Not only is it free, as there are many article sites around where you can have your articles published for free, but each article you have published will be providing a link back to your site.  This means that you are helping to gain even higher rankings where search engines are concerned.  When writing an article, you should always include information about you, the author (this will usually be in a resource box at the bottom of your article), and do not forget to include that all important link to your own website. 

By distributing to numerous article sites, you are not only gaining traffic (as when someone sees it on there, they will click on your link if they like what they saw), but also you get a link that points directly back to your site, which the search engines use to rank sites. 

However, if you are someone who dislikes writing, then you could always look at using a ghostwriter.  There are many sites around today who offer ghostwriting services, but when initially setting up an online business, this may not be an expense that you want to incur.

Online Forums

When using these, do not forget to include your signature line at the end of any comments that you make, as this will then provide a further link back to your site. The best bet is to stick to forums that are on the same topic as what you are trying to sell. Not only will you be learning about your potential customer’s desires, but you’ll be able to establish yourself as an expert in the field.

Blogs

Blogs are a great way of ensuring you get back links to your site.  So why not start a blog on your website?  But ensure that you post to your blog several times a week and think of it as news page for your site.  Certainly blogging has become the in thing at the moment on the web.  You only have to do a quick search to find out just how many there are.

Online Payment Portals For Your Online Business

Is Using an Online Payment System a Good Decision for my Online Business?

There are many online payment services today which provide you with an alternative way to traditional payment methods.  So unlike banks and credit card companies, services such as PayPal and CheckFree no longer require a business to have a merchant account.  In fact, using services like this not only provides a quicker way for money to be paid online, but it is more secure than having someone sending you a check or cash.  This is because the funds are electronically transferred to your account with them in order to settle any transaction made.

Such services have become especially popular among those who use online auction sites (such as Ebay), but also many other online businesses are now beginning to see the advantages of these services as well.  However, what is important to know is how they work, and how to avoid any potential problems that may arise.

Such services use a relatively simple process in order to transfer money from one person to another.  What you need to do is set up an account providing enough information which should include your real name, email address and credit card or bank account details (which are used to verify your identity).  Then, in order for someone to pay you, they enter your email address and the amount of the transaction in question.  This is then paid into your account, and can either then be transferred to your bank account, or a check can be sent to you.

However, many of the payment services will charge a small fee in order to transfer funds.  For example, PayPal charges you up to 2.5% for each transfer that they make (but this all depends on the amount).  But what should be remembered is that these fees are probably less than what you would normally pay for a credit card merchant account.  Also, such services can be especially helpful when you need to arrange for small repetitive payments to be made to your account, such as affiliate rewards and commissions.

But there are some drawbacks to be had from using a payment service, and these are as follows:-

1.                   Many of them impose a daily or weekly limit on the amount of money that you send or receive.  So if you want to exceed these limits you may find yourself incurring an additional fee for a “business account” or “premiere account”. 

2.                  These services are not banks, and therefore are not subject to strict banking regulations or protected by Federal Deposit Insurance.

3.                  Often these services provide their customers with less protection against fraud and abuse than many credit card companies offer. 

4.                  Also, they are sometimes quick to freeze a customer’s account if they suspect fraudulent or other criminal activities are taking place.  They can be so quick sometimes that some customers have found that their account has been frozen for no apparent reason whatsoever.

It is important that before you sign up to any payment service, you read through their terms and conditions thoroughly.  Plus, also read through their terms of service agreement carefully.  It is important that you fully understand and accept the service’s dispute policy, limits on liability, their fee structure and any other rules or regulations that they may have.   It is also important that you do not keep too much money in your account, rather hold in it enough to conduct a few days of business and any unused funds should be transferred over to your regular bank account.

Below are just a few more payment services that you may want to look at further when setting up an online business account.

1.                       Authorize.net. This service processes credit card and checking account transactions.

2.                      BidPay.  This allows person to person payments, in which they accept a credit card payment from the payer and then send a money order through to the payee.

3.                      BillPoint.  This also allows person to person payments, but from a credit card.  Originally this system was being targeted specifically at Ebay customers.

4.                      E-Gold.  This allows the payment in gold (silver, platinum or palladium) to be made from one customer to another using an account based system.

5.                      PayPal.  This is probably the most well known of payment services, and it allows user to user payments.  This is where a payer uses a credit card to pay money into another user’s account.  Or, in fact, they can use money they already have in that account in order to pay for the goods they have purchased.

World Pay.  This service provides both an internet merchant account, and payment processing service in one package

What Is Affiliate And Why You Should Join Other Affiliate Marketers

Just What is Affiliate Marketing and Why Become an Affiliate Marketer?

Many times you will have seen previously in this book we have mentioned affiliate marketing as a great way of setting up an online business. During this chapter, we will provide a more in depth look at what it is exactly.

Affiliate Marketing is a method of promoting a product in which an affiliate is then rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer and/or sale provided through their efforts to the actual company selling the product.  The compensation or commission that an affiliate gets may be based on a certain value for each exposure, visit (pay per click), new customer (pay per lead), sale which is usually a percentage of the item sold (pay per sale or revenue share) or it may be a combination of any of these.

Many companies like to use affiliate marketing because they do not incur any marketing expenses unless the desired result is realized. 

There are also some e-commerce sites around today which run their own affiliate programs, while others use third party services.  These provide intermediaries who will track traffic or sales that are referred to them from their various affiliates.  There are many businesses online today who owe much of their growth and success to the use of affiliate marketing.  It has been especially successful for small and midsize businesses on the internet.

We have now looked at what affiliate marketing is, now let us look at some reasons as why it is a good type of online business to set up.

No Production Costs

With an affiliate program, production costs are no longer an issue as the product has been developed and proven to be good.  Best of all, it has all come out of the merchant’s accounts and not yours.

Do not need a lot of money to set up.

All you will need is a desk, computer, internet connection and word processing software to get started.

Costs Involved

Normally it is free to join an affiliate program, and all the set up costs and shipping costs will be met by the merchant whose products you are selling.  Plus, as you do not need any where to store goods, this is another reason for joining an affiliate program.  So even if you happen to live in a 1 bedroom apartment, you can still sell the biggest products going as an affiliate because all the goods are held by the merchant you are working as an affiliate for.

Choices

There are thousands of products and services that you can choose from.  So finding the right products for either a website you have already or one that you are planning to build is immense.

No need to have a Merchants Account

This can be a time consuming and costly expense for anyone setting up a business for the first time.  Certainly, it is even more so where an online business is concerned.  However, as an affiliate, the merchant you are selling the product for will bear all costs, as well as handle the processing of all payments.  So you never have to worry about any potential charge backs, fraudulent purchases or losing your merchant account completely as an affiliate.  Plus, no longer will you be concerned with collecting and storing names and addresses of customers along with their credit card details, as this is all done by the merchant who you are affiliated to.

Plus, no longer do you have to worry about dealing with awkward or nasty customers and their complaints.  This is down to the merchant to deal with.

Probably one of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can make money while you sleep. 

Another benefit to get into affiliate marketing is that if the product you chose isn’t making money, then you can just dump it.  Remove any links to the product and then start promoting another instead.  This is because there are no long term contracts which bind you to selling one particular product, so the risk to you is minimal.

If you work hard at affiliate marketing, then the potential to earn a good income is high.  It really depends on just how much you want it and how much effort you are willing to put in to the products you are trying to sell.

For an idea of just what kinds of products and services offer affiliate programs, check out Clickbank.com or ComissionJunction.com. Both of these sites are generally at the very top of most affiliate marketers’ lists.

Setting Up An Online Business On A Budget

How to Set Up an Online Business on a Budget

You have now decided to set up an online business, but your budget is very small, so how can you get going?

You could start off by looking for free domain names.  Because there are so many companies around who are now selling domain names, the market has become quite competitive.  But there are a few sites around that will register a domain for you at no charge.  However, there is a catch with some of them in that they will set themselves up as the administrator for your domain and then only transfer ownership to you after a set period of time for free or will charge you a small fee.

If you are going to be setting up and launching a website, but do not want to pay the $20-$40 a month that you can typically charged for hosting, then don’t.  There are plenty of places on the web today that will host your site for free.  But before you get too excited about this prospect, it is important to remember that there is a drawback to be had from using such places.  Most of these free host sites will place a banner at the top of your pages for allowing you to do this.  However, there are some web hosts around who do not charge you a fee or force you to have a banner on your site either.  While there are others who will remove the banners completely for a small fee each year, which is nothing compared to what you would pay to get someone to host your site for you each month.

What if you are someone who does not have their own product to sell, but still wants to make money online?  Then look no further than becoming an affiliate marketer.  This we will look at more closely in the next chapter of this book