Creating and running an effective online business is realistically comprised of several hundred, rather than 6, but this will serve as a guide for the direction of your efforts.  Contrary to what you may hear rampantly on the Internet, there is no cookie-cutter, get-rich quick scheme on the web.  Not only is every online business different, what works for one person or in one month may not work for another person or in the next month.

The Internet is constantly changing, and the online market is inherently different this year than it was last year.  New technological improvements occur monthly, and impact the online business environment.  What works for one individual when he is the first to sell a certain product a certain way may not work just six months later when he has sold his idea to 40,000 other marketers, and they all begin to promote it.  Traffic generation tactics are significantly different than they were just a year ago, and hardly resemble profitable strategies three years ago.

These 6 Steps are simply the bare-bones skeleton of what has to happen for your online business to be successful.  They are foundational, and although the implementation strategies are different today than several years ago, the basic steps remain the same.

1.    Develop or discover a product.  You must find a product that meets today’s needs.  A 5 year old product whose resell rights you can buy for a dollar or get for free probably won’t meet the needs of today’s consumers.  You must be willing to pay for the rights to sell a current , useful product, or become an affiliate marketer, where you promote a popular product, and in exchange are paid a percentage of the income from the sale.

2.    Determine how the potential customers can view your product and see a sales presentation.  If you develop your own product or purchase the rights to sell someone else’s, you will need a website.  A few tips here: Rather than accept free web hosting, purchase your own domain name and pay to have your domain name and web site hosted by a professional web hosting company with a reputable history.  If your free web hosting company goes bankrupt, they generally take your fledgling business with them.

3.    Once you have your web site up and running, unless you are using an affiliate program that supplies a sales page, you must develop a sales script and web copy.  Aside from your web hosting decision, this is probably the most important thing you can do.  You may be tempted at first to write a sales pitch on your own, but unless you already have a lot of experience in the offline market writing effective sales letters, you need to, absolutely must, invest in a few courses on web copywriting.  Be willing to spend some money upfront on learning this skill.  Too many marketers try to wing it in this area and after a few months of losing money online, finally break down and purchase the knowledge to write a good sales pitch.  Do it the other way around—buy the knowledge first, and start making sales from the beginning.  Customers will not buy just because you have a web site—they buy from the web site that does the best job of convincing them it has the best product for their need.

4.    You must develop a traffic source that works.  When you first begin, you may be on a shoestring, and that is OK.  Assuming you have been willing to spend some money on sales letter writing and a decent web host, you may be able to skimp in the traffic arena for awhile, if you have plenty of time.  If you do not have money to advertise, nor time to seek out low cost advertising, you probably shouldn’t be attempting an online business.  If you do choose to go the low-cost route—know two things up front—the returns are really low and you will spend vast amounts of time on traffic generation.  Once you begin to make sales, you must invest your income in paid forms of traffic generation.  If you do not, you will run out of enthusiasm for generating the free traffic, and without reinvesting the income from your first sales into advertising, you are sure to fail.  Good sources of low-cost, but time consuming traffic are: writing articles and posting them to article directories, low cost classified ads, and ezine ads.  You may see hyped-up ads for thousands or visitors for a low cost or millions of banner ads for another reasonable price—both of these methods may have worked 2 years ago, but they are a sure waste today.

5.    Once you begin to get traffic to your online business site, you must keep detailed records of where the traffic comes from, and what percentage of visitors from each source are purchasing your product.  If you have visitors that cost you $50 per hundred to come to your web site, but on average they only purchase $25 per hundred visitors, the income may feel good, but you are not profitable, and are losing money.  By tracking your expenses on each type of visitor and by tracking your revenue on the same sources of visitors, you can determine which campaigns need changes or need to be eliminated and which need to be increased in intensity.

6.    By following this pattern of steps, and by keeping diligent records (there is plenty of good web site tracking software on the market that can help you do that), you can develop a profitable online business.  Again, it will not happen overnight, and you will not get rich quick.  However, if you build a solid online business with a solid foundation, and are willing to spend some money learning how to do it right, you really can become successful in business online.

There are tons of resources available that will teach you how to make money on the internet. Heck, I’ve written tutorials like that myself. But, perhaps it’s easier to demonstrate what to do, with a lesson on what not to do. This article will teach you how to drive visitors away from your website screaming “Get me outta here!” If you prefer being alone with your website and don’t want all those pesky visitors bothering you, then follow the guidelines below and you’ll get rid of them quick as a blink.

1. Don’t state on your website what you do or what you sell. Make it a complete mystery why you decided to build your website in the first place. It’s like a secret club — your visitors are left in the dark. Have you been to sites like this where you show up and think “What the heck is this site about?” If you’re not presenting a clear statement about why your visitors should spend their money (or at least come back again), then you’re on your way to hermit-land.

2. Overwhelm visitors with lots of information. Almost as bad as the “What the heck is this site about?” problem is the “Oh my Goodness! Oh my Gracious!” sites. As a visitor, you know the sites I’m talking about. The page opens and your jaw drops. There is a sea of banners, with links everywhere and articles galore. Where do you go? What do you do? I’ll tell you what I do. Click the little “x’ in the upper right-hand corner to get the heck outta there!

3. Make the ordering process really complicated. There’s nothing I love more than putting items into my shopping cart and then spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to set up an account and pay. Guess what? I sure don’t click the ‘contact us’ button. I click the “x” instead. You’ve succeeded in getting rid of yet another pesky customer who wanted to spend money.

4. Fill your site with outdated information and broken links. Pfshew. You dodged a visitor with that one. They clicked on a link that was broken — and off they went.

5. Make sure there’s no way for an interested customer or business partner to contact you. Heaven forbid, you might get some spam if you have your contact information on your site.

Thank Goodness you don’t have those gosh-darned customers emailing you while you’re trying to read up on Brad Pitt’s love life.

Obviously, I’m being silly, but you do know that these examples are true. You’ve seen sites that seem like they are trying to drive you away. If you are spending time and energy putting up a website to make money, then, make some money. You CAN do it!

In a way, the Internet may be compared to the Wild Wild West. (Where do you think the acronym ‘WWW’ came from?) There is no real central authority that is in charge and many scam artists take full advantage of this. Especially as a small business owner with no large company name behind yours, building credibility in the prospect’s mind becomes crucial.

Here are seven ways to build your online credibility.

1. You may find it beneficial to place your picture (even a smugshot) on your website.

Brick and mortar stores have the advantage since the clerk has a direct face-to-face conversation with the customer. It is therefore easier to ‘connect’ and form a relationship.

I recently read an interesting thread on a marketing forum message board with several people giving their opinions on the pros and cons of placing your picture on your site. Most of the fears expressed were that people might be turned off by the owner’s ethnicity. Even though this is a real fear I think that the best reaction I read on this point came from an Italian-American small business owner. She said that she would not want to do business with someone who was prejudiced against her anyway – I thought to myself – “Problem solved!”

Your photo helps your visitor to reach across the great chasm of the Internet and touch your customer -– right from their monitors. Why do you think cellular phone customers are trading in their ‘old phones’ for the new ‘talk-to-me-and-see-me-at-the-same-time’ models?

2. Provide an audio message in your own voice.

This is closely tied to the former tip. It all has to do with feeling connected and human. We are not computers – we just use them. We have emotions and use them to communicate. There is nothing that can communicate emotions like the human voice.

I can still fondly remember those days before my family could afford a television. As children we often listened to those radio dramas. You were there in the center of the action. ‘The Loooooonee RRRRanger!” the gallop of the horses, the crackle of gunfire … trust me, you were there. You smelled the gunpowder and rode those horses!

What can you use your voice to do? At least it can say, “There is a REAL person behind this website”. In this our automated age REAL counts.

3. Place your PHYSICAL address and contact information on every page.

Here again you are being transparent and in the open about your identity and how you may be contacted. You have nothing to hide, and you do not intend to take their money and close down your website the next day.

Your address also adds a sense of structure to the very fluid environment of the Internet. It is much like the sign on a brick and mortar store – this is where I’m located. That is why just a post office box number would not suffice.

Can you be reached by fax, landline phone, email, and mobile phone? This information adds to your credibility, not to mention your perceived availability.

4. Do not use a free email or hosting service as your main site.

Tied closely to credibility are the perceptions that you create of your business. Some say that in business image is everything. That may be taking it a little too far but you are NOT who you think you are but what the customer perceives you to be!

If you use a free email service such as hotmail.com what does this say about you? You are so successful but you cannot even afford a paid email service? Most spammers use these free email accounts anyway – that’s another count against you. It may be best to use the account associated with your paid website’s domain. I think that almost all web hosting services provide POP email accounts.

5. Have an ‘About’ page.

When a surfer appears at your site for the first time it is like going on a blind date. The visitor may have heard a little about you and know where to find you but she is practically just window-shopping. The ‘About’ page gives her a good chance to get a quick background check on you. She can then know if you are the one she really wants to build a relationship with.

Information you should place on this page includes:
- a personal and professional biography,
- maybe a photograph of yourself,
- name, address and telephone number,
- your company objectives,
- a comprehensive description of you and your company.

Just knowing this ‘outline’ of who you are places the visitor at ease and most of the nervous jitter hopefully disappears. Why? She sees you are not afraid to be checked out.

6. Include a ‘Privacy Statement’.

Internet users are becoming more and more sensitive to how their personal information is being used. This makes it almost imperative for you to provide a page with your privacy policy.

General concerns that would have to be addressed are:
*How you use the information that is collected.
*Is the information shared with a third party?
*Let them know how they can opt out of any mailing list they sign up for.
*Why you track their IP address.

For a more detailed discussion on website privacy you may check: http://www.truste.org/

7. Use your customers’ unsolicited testimonials and product reviews.

What you say about your product or service is not really taken seriously. I mean what are you expected to say anyway? It’s your product … duh. What carry the greater weight are the opinions of other experts in your field. But what carries the greatest weight is what the customers themselves say.

This means that you can get instant credibility if you present the unsolicited testimonials of your satisfied customers. These testimonials should be accompanied with the email address or website and full name of the customer. The less information you give about the customer who is providing the testimonial the less believable it is. I have had visitors who actually contacted these customers to confirm that the testimonials were real.

So pour on the testimonials – too much is not enough.

There you had it. Use all these strategies to help build your credibility online and see more customers willing to open their wallets and their hearts.