Successful small-business on the web
by Tim North
Stripped of all the hype and hard sell, it's still realistic for
the average small business to expect to make money by selling
products or services on the web.
Don't expect it to be easy, though. Making money on the web is
(and always was) hard work. This article discusses how to avoid
the many pitfalls that await you.
Choose your field of battle
----------------------------
If you're looking to make money from the web, there are four main
offerings that you can provide:
1. You can sell physical products like books, videos or CDs.
Clients visiting your web site order these online using
credit cards. You then post out the products.
2. You can sell online products like software, e-books or
subscription-based newsletters. Clients can purchase these
online using credit cards and then immediately download them.
3. You can advertise in-person services in which you meet face-
to-face with your clients. Such services include accountancy,
plumbing, gardening etc. Clients then pay in-person, not
online.
4. You can advertise online services for which you don't need to
meet the client, but can deal entirely via e-mail; e.g.
proofreading.
The first step to making money on the web thus requires you to
choose which of these offerings you plan to provide. You may
decide to specialise in a single one, or you may try to cover all
four.
Find a niche
------------
The days when the Internet was considered new are long gone.
Current estimates are that there are several hundred million
computers hosting web sites and many billions of web pages. It's
almost certain that whatever product or service you're going to
sell, a lot of other people are selling it too.
A remedy for this situation is to specialise.
Find a niche that's little covered. For example, if you wanted to
sell music, you might specialise in Australian music or even
Australian country music.
By doing so, you're lessening the size of your audience, of
course, but you're also lessening the number of people you're
competing with.
The trick is to find a niche that will have a large enough
audience to sustain you yet is specific enough that you have few
competitors.
Achieving success
-----------------
Having decided what products and services you want to sell -- and
researched how much competition you'll have -- there are still a
few major hurdles remaining:
1. If you're going to be selling online, you'll need to be able
to accept credit card payments.
2. You'll need to be able to set up a web site.
3. You'll need to be able to market it effectively.
It's beyond the scope of this brief article to cover credit card
payments in depth, so I will only mention my own experience and
say that I have found Digibuy to be very a reliable means of
accepting online credit-card payments.
http://www.digibuy.com
Services like these allow you to accept credit-card payments
without having to set yourself up with a merchant account. Of
course, if you already have a merchant account, your bank can
provide you with more details on how to use it to accept online
payments.
Good luck and best wishes with yor new venture.
You'll find many more helpful tips like these in Tim North's
much applauded range of e-books. FREE SAMPLE CHAPTERS are
available, and all books come with a money-back guarantee.
http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com
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