Building an Online Business Business: Generating Income

Generating Income

Most ecommerce business owners spend all their time marketing and building websites and very little time selling. If anything, they create squeeze pages and pre-selling articles and then expect those to work.

This is not how ‘selling on the net works.’ The first thing you need to know is that Billions of dollars trade hands over the net every year. Google AdSense works, eBay works, affiliates work, and selling from a website works – but not for everyone.

You need to know how to make money on the net before you make money.

Part 1

The first part is to understand who buys your product from the net. There are dozens of marketing research websites that will help. You can even do some of your own research.

Each marketing group has things that are specific to them:

Values
Morals
Grammar style
Vocabulary used
Their wants
Their needs
What they consider a luxury
What they consider a necessity
Do they want to be educated, entertained, or for a bit of escapism

Each of these things will help you create a website that will ‘talk’ to your potential client. The website must speak the consumer’s language. It must touch their emotional needs.

The biggest mistake is to focus on how great your product or company is. Instead, focus on the consumer, their needs, their desires, their wants.

Part 2
Make sure that every page has a link to the buy now page. Don’t ever force the consumer on the buy now page. They should migrate there naturally.

The forums should have places where the shoppers can find what they need to make them feel confident about buying. This may be in the form of a forum, a weekly chat, comments on a blog, a podcast, videos, or other tools that help the consumer answer their questions.

No one buys until they are ready. Making the reader ready – even if it takes a few months – is the best way to sell on line.

Step 3
This step is where you stop selling and turn all the focus on the visitor. When you do this, the visitor is given the chance to publish their own writing, become a member, receive something free, or other tools that are egocentric or ‘self-focused’ toward the buyer.

Step 4
Ask the visitor to stay, but don’t do this in the shopping cart. When they hit the cart, they want to buy. If you force them to enter in personal information – even an email addy – they will leave.