Foundations and Sites!

The internet is the largest market ever made and you would expect that supply and demand would determine price

What do the Internet, 380 million users and 90+ million web sites have in common? Competition! How do you beat it? The internet is the largest market ever made and you would expect that supply and demand would determine price, but on the internet price may not be the most important factor influencing decisions! The way you market and present your product or service is much more important, but is something that is overlooked by 90% of the 90+ million sites. Only the best web sites are going to be able to survive, but this should not discourage you. If you are reading this article you are obviously interested in internet marketing and you have what it takes to succeed! Getting to the top is like building a house. It takes a lot of time and energy to build, but once built, you have a secure investment. However you have to be careful to build the house on a strong foundation. Your product is the foundation. If you do not have a good product to market, you will not be able to establish a solid base for your online business, no matter how much promotion you do. Naturally you would want to make sure your house is attractive and easy to live in. The same goes for your web site. If it is not well laid out with easy navigation, your visitors will not stay on it more than a few seconds. Ask friends their opinion on how to improve your site. Make sure your site looks OK in both MSIE and Netscape browsers. But having an attractive web site does not necessarily mean you have to spend a lot on web site designers. Simple is often better. Some of the most effective sites have a very simple layout but very strong copy. Learning how to write good copy is essential if you want to sell. Your information must be easy to read, in short sentences and paragraphs that do not stretch all the way across the browser screen. Highlight important words in bold or in heading tags so that they stand out. Learn how to write phrases that make your visitor want to discover more! When building your house you automate as much as possible. You use electricity instead of candles. You use a geyser instead of boiling water over a fire. Likewise on your web site you need to automate wherever you can. Set up a newsletter that will automatically add and remove subscribers. Set up auto responders to automatically send out information that a visitor requests. All of this will give you more time to manage the real tasks on your web site, the marketing and promotion. Would you want to be a lodger or own your own house? On the web, your own domain name is very important! How many web sites do *you* visit that don't have their own domain name? And where would you rather build your house? In a good area with easy access or on the higher density outskirts where access is time consuming. Make sure you have a professional web hosting service that does not slow down traffic to your site. Full service hosting may cost more than free hosting services but like everything else, you usually get what you pay for. Once your house is built and looking good, you can invite your visitors in and if you have built it well they will want to come back! Once your site is built you can promote it online and offline, using both conventional and unconventional means to get attention. But target the right people! When you find an interested market you will get much better response rates, so don't be afraid to spend money on targeted advertising. Market a good product, make it attractive, make it compelling to buy, get your own eye-catching address, automate as much as possible and locate in a good area. If you are missing any of these essentials then you are not optimizing the effectiveness of your site. How much time do you spend on promoting and marketing? Time is an investment. If you want to leverage the usefulness of your time, it is definitely worth spending a bit on the essentials first. Don't expect to be able to live in your house until it is built. Get-rich-schemes don't have any foundations. Is your aim to make a quick buck now or to build a foundation that will bring in residual income later?