Here’s how you can make money using Automatic Online Shop!

Multi-channel retailing is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses to survive in an online age - Rebecca Spicer explores the options and steps required to build a successful e-store.

Thanks to the spread of broadband and wireless services at home, online business are growing rapidly, urged on by confidence in online brands such as eBay and Amazon.

The global ACNielsen Online Consumer Opinion Survey conducted last October found the vast majority of Australian internet users (87 percent) made a purchase over the internet. “Our ongoing e-commerce research clearly demonstrates an upward trend in Australian and global online shopping,” says Richard Sandlant, ACNielsen’s director of customised research.

So, how can your business tap into this growing market? While businesses may already
have websites to promote their business and provide additional information, it may be worth considering actually selling online as well.

David Lammey, general manager of business and consumer at web and application hosting company WebCentral, believes the decision for a business to expand online will be based on increasing its turnover and making the business more profitable. “What businesses are trying to do is sell more with less effort, and an online store can do that,” he says.

However, before embarking on developing your e-store, Lammey suggests asking yourself the following questions:

1. Is my product really going to sell; is it applicable; are people going to buy it on the internet? Anna Carosa started her accessory business, msAnna, just over two years ago. After successfully selling via mail-order catalogue she decided to launch online a year later. Selling mainly handbags and jewellery, she knew these were viable products to sell online. “I find with handbags, it’s more of a visual thing,” she says. “People know roughly what their style and taste is so most can buy jewellery and fashion accessories online relatively easily.”

2. How do you want to brand and structure the shop; do you want it to be a link off your main business website or a separate entity?

3. How am I going to do it? Analyse your current financial position—resources, costs, and so on—then ask yourself, can I afford this additional distribution channel? You’ll need to consider the extra resources needed to fulfil online sales and maintain the website, as well as set-up charges, ongoing maintenance and trouble-shooting costs.

4. Will you build and maintain the site in-house, outsource the job or use a combination of both? Deciding which way to go will depend on your time and resources, and how much risk you’re willing to take.

If you’re planning to sell online, the best research starting point would be to shop online yourself. Have a look at how other e-stores function and you’ll get an understanding of what consumers expect in terms of usability and security.

More on how to build your e-store: Building an E-Store by Rebecca Spicer, DynamicBusiness.com

SEO tutorial Video. Discover what title tags are, why are they important for SEO and how to write them.

Link-baiting can encompass a wide range of blogging techniques including: contests, lists, research, usefulness, quizzes, tools, ask for a review; the list is endless. Here are a few link-baiting techniques I have used on many of my blogs with good results:

1. Lists - Articles with lists get a lot of love from Diggers and Delicious. Social bookmark site such as these love valuable lists. Lists have been done to death, so if you ARE going to use this technique, make sure you are adding some substance and knowledge for your readers. Lists get a lot of backlinks because they are actually tough to create. A well done list can take hours of research and many more to compose and format.

2. Podcasting - Podcasts are great baiting tools. Podcasts that give tips, tutorials, or news about something related to your niche or industry is a great way to get blogs to link to you. Blog a Podcast interview of a famous name in your industry. This is a really good way to get links and build your credibility.

3. Write about them - One of the best ways to get a link from a blog is to write about them. Say something nice about their blog or writing style. Try ellaborating on one of their blog posts and link to them a few times during the article. Then email the owner of the blog the permalink to let them know about the post. This technique has worked for me dozens of times. Make sure the post or review is thorough and not a lazy effort. Pro bloggers know this trick and won�t link to you if your article is lame (less than 300 words, no photos, 0-1 links, bad grammar) even if you praise them throughout the review.

4. Humor & Wit - Be funny; let your personality come out. One of the best ways to create linkbait is to be funny. People love humor, especially in these war times. Blog about a funny cartoon, take a funny picture, write a funny title, be sarcastic.

5. Research - Most of my blog post are between 300-500 words and take me anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours to research, write, proofread, etc. If I want to create a really special 1000 word, linkbait article, I will sometimes spend 2 hours on research alone, not including writing, editing, etc. I have found if you spend extra time on an article and pack it with useful information, people are likely to use it for their own research will link to it.

This video talks of how illegal downloads in the Web can affect our online businesses.

The type of industry you operate in may necessitate the inclusion of certain information on your website. The requirements imposed upon your business are also likely to apply to your internet presence. If you’re unsure how to manage or implement these requirements, you should seek suitable professional advice.

If applicable, you need to consider if there are any terms and conditions you require your online customers to agree to. When contracting online, the fundamentals of offer and acceptance should be set out to ensure you don’t bind yourself to a contract you can’t fulfil. It would be unfortunate to find yourself in the position of having a binding contract to sell one hundred plasma televisions for $500 each instead of $5,000 each simply because of a typo on your website.

Your obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 and related legislation also need some thought. These don’t disappear simply because you are dealing with information online. To minimise the risks when you start conducting your business online, you should meet with your lawyer, or other professional adviser, and consider these fundamentals as part of your early planning.

An online presence can be an exceptionally cost effective and lucrative way of operating your business. A real issue, however, is the often carefree attitude with which some businesses approach their online operations. The internet is not a lawless territory where anything goes, it’s often the case that what needs consideration in the ‘real world’ needs equal, if not more, attention when the internet is used.

A website operator should ask themselves the following when establishing and operating a website:

• Have I checked that I can use that domain name?

• Do I own the rights in the website design and content?

• Have I chosen the right ISP to host my website and meet my business needs?

• Am I being diligent in keeping my website content accurate and up-to-date?

• Am I able to make changes to my website as and when required?

• Is my website set up and structured to adequately cover both statutory and other legal obligations imposed upon my business?

• Does my website contain the necessary content to complement and reflect my business model?

• Have I discussed my needs, obligations and requirements with my professional advisers?

If you can answer yes to all of the above then you are well on your way to a happy, healthy, online presence. Now you just need to work out how you are going to attract visitors to your website.

Source: Online Regulations - Your Website and the Law by Michael Sutton, DynamicBusiness.com

Before you start promoting your website, you need to work on the following points; otherwise all your efforts will be futile!

Your products or services

Whatever you sell, make sure that your products or services are of high quality! Go to your prospective competitors’ sites and check out, how compatible you are. Trying to sell an item, which has dubious quality or reputation, will take you nowhere. Ask yourself if you were the client, would you buy this product for your own use?

Your eCommerce site or Web Store

Many Netpreneurs don’t take the quality and design of their websites seriously. They reckon that first I’ll make some money and then only I’ll go for a high quality website. This is a totally wrong attitude! It does not make any difference if your online business is only an extension of your successful offline business or it’s completely a new venture, you must take building your eCommerce site seriously. Your website is your online office, showroom and sales channel. Decision whether people will buy from your website, is based in many cases just on the look and feel of the web store. A lost visitor may never come back to your website again. That’s why it’s a good idea to spend enough time and money on the development of the right website.

If you don’t have a website yet and you would like the business to get on really quickly, try obtaining a web store from Yahoo!, Bigstep or Rusbiz. Yahoo and Bigstep both have excellent templates to create high quality web stores. If along with your web store you also would like to have features like automated procurement and supply chain management you should consider getting your web store from Rusbiz.com. Since Rusbiz is also a B2B portal, you get access to thousands of buyers and sellers without paying anything extra for it.

Before you start promoting your website, you need to work on the following points; otherwise all your efforts will be futile!

Your products or services

Whatever you sell, make sure that your products or services are of high quality! Go to your prospective competitors’ sites and check out, how compatible you are. Trying to sell an item, which has dubious quality or reputation, will take you nowhere. Ask yourself if you were the client, would you buy this product for your own use?

Your eCommerce site or Web Store

Many Netpreneurs don’t take the quality and design of their websites seriously. They reckon that first I’ll make some money and then only I’ll go for a high quality website. This is a totally wrong attitude! It does not make any difference if your online business is only an extension of your successful offline business or it’s completely a new venture, you must take building your eCommerce site seriously. Your website is your online office, showroom and sales channel. Decision whether people will buy from your website, is based in many cases just on the look and feel of the web store. A lost visitor may never come back to your website again. That’s why it’s a good idea to spend enough time and money on the development of the right website.

If you don’t have a website yet and you would like the business to get on really quickly, try obtaining a web store from Yahoo!, Bigstep or Rusbiz. Yahoo and Bigstep both have excellent templates to create high quality web stores. If along with your web store you also would like to have features like automated procurement and supply chain management you should consider getting your web store from Rusbiz.com. Since Rusbiz is also a B2B portal, you get access to thousands of buyers and sellers without paying anything extra for it.

Source: Online Business

This whole SMO thing has become a phenomenon. An effective marketing tool.

1. Increase your linkability - This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are “static” - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to del.icio.us” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).

3. Reward inbound links - Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you.

4. Help your content travel - Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.

5. Encourage the mashup - In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube’s idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.

Source: Influential Marketing