Buying and using a laptop - articles, tips and advice

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How To Start A New Successful Business In 2007

Now let's start. Rather you are a programmer, a writer, a hobbyist, an entrepreneur - you will easily find a way to do business online.

The first thing is to get the right idea that sells.

1. Sell things that people are looking for in your niche but before you start establish a business plan.

Tips : your product must have something different from the crowd. Ex: you can sell golf balls bought from wholesalers but there are already hundreds of competitors so to be different why not sell autographed golf balls or add a free tee.

2. Domain name is the most important of all, you can get the greatest idea in the world but if your domain name isn’t easy to remember and isn’t a dot com, you will fail to success.

Your domain must be a dot com, descriptiveness and short as possible or easy to remember. Brandable domains are great too but will require you to spend huge money on advertising so that’s not really a great idea unless you’re a big company. Like in the example 1. , domains like autographedgolfballs.com will be great even if it’s long cause it’s easy to remember. But if you can’t find one I recommend you to try Ebay.com, Afternic.com, Sedo.com for domains for sale by owners or Whois.net for finding expired domains.

To make sure what niche is great and pick that keyword to create your domain go to nichetaxi.com

Cheap domain names can be registered at Godaddy.com or Domainspricedright.com (sister site of godddy.com) hosting there is cheap too or you can find cheap hosting companies that offers domain name free on search engines.

3. Logo Design Get a Nice logo for your business because that’s how they will recognize your product. I recommend you cheap but quality logo designers on Ebay (logorama is one of my favorite on Ebay) or SureLogos.com you get logo for less than $30.00.

But if you’re an artist, you can do it your self.

Tips for DIY : search google images with (your key word + logo) you can get some inspiration for your logo, then subscribe to a royalty free image website to make sure the picture is not copyrighted than design your logo.

4. Web Design

The first thing visitors will see when they will land to your site is if it’s done professionally or it’s done like a personal website then they have two option that takes less than 2 seconds to decide whether to skip your site or stay.

You can get great templates at templatemonster.com but honestly I would avoid it, I never use it cause I like better customized and unique web design.

Most marketers will tell you that “mini-sites” are the best to convert visitors to buyers and that’s true.

Now depending on what you sell. If you re selling a unique or multiple digital products, I highly recommend you mini-sites. If you’re selling real products that will be delivery by post office or shipping services, I don’t recommend you mini-sites but a website with several pages like contact informations, Faq, Shipping informations, terms and conditions…

Why? Because Mini sites are design to make a visitor take action fast and they want that product fast too (digital delivery, instant download)

Non digital products websites need to make their visitors confident on what they are going to buy and make sure that the product will be delivery in good condition, on time and at their door. So several pages can explain and give them trust.

Both will need to be design with quality using he right color combination that match the logo and entire website.

Tips : Always look at other websites for inspiration, don’t re-invent the wheel. Take a piece of paper, draw your web page placing your logo, tables, contents, links, map…. This draft will be useful when you will start editing your homepage with your software.

I use Dreamweaver and Frontpage but you have other great tools like Nvu.com (free) or Xsitepro.com….

5. Title and contents.

These are very important for SEO (Search engine Optimization) Always add your main keywords in title, subtitles and contents, do it naturally not like spamming.

The title is the first thing that visitor will read so it must be very attractive, there are a lot of marketing articles about it on the web so I won’t discuss it here.

For Mini-sites contents are different than regular websites, they are more aggressive and push buyers to take action rather by subscribing to their list in exchange of a free report or rather by buying their products instantly. So you need what we call a professional sales letter. You can do it yourself if you’re good in writing and marketing or you can hire a copywriter (elance.com, getafreelancer.com…) to do it for you .

All your contents must be unique and original, and then you can get the Copyscape.com seal to avoid people stealing your work.

For Regular Websites, contents must be more like a shopping site like pictures, description of products, benefits, prices, guarantee…

Tips for marketing :

• Add a Opt in list by offering something interesting and free to your visitor
• Add testimonials
• Add Guarantees
• Add bonuses
• Add Special Offer Prices
• Add Affiliate program
• Live Help or Support

6. Shopping Cart and payments

Most online businesses use Paypal for their payment process as it’s really easy to set up and start online sales accepting credit cards and paypal cash. I did get over ten thousand dollars in profits since with Paypal and never had problem, so I highly recommend you Paypal.

If you’re a big online company you can subscribe to an online bank for transactions with credit cards but you will need to spend more fees and send several documents to get approval from the bank.