WHY THE DO NOTHING APPROACH TO MAKING

WHY THE DO NOTHING APPROACH TO MAKING

MONEY WITH YOUR WEB SITE WILL ALWAYS FAIL

By S. Hunter

Here's a common scenario. The young entrepreneur with dollars in his eyes places a web page on the Internet. He waits in anticipation for the 60 million Internet users to land on his site, join his opportunity and make him rich! After a few days he's surprised that he's had no response. He checks his web page to make sure its accessible and skims the headline, "Make $165,000 a week with no effort - Sign Up Today!" He thinks to himself, "I've got an eye-catching headline, that's not the problem". He scans down lower on the site, past the flashing graphics, and makes sure the phone number is correct, yes that's fine too. A few weeks and then a few months go by and still he's had no response. Frustrated he writes the Internet off as a load of hype and vows never to fall victim to such hype again. What's wrong here.

This individual, like many out there has convinced himself that making money with a web site on the Internet takes no effort. He has placed a site on a free web page service and expected to have his phone ring off the hook. When this didn't happen he blamed the Internet when the fault lay with himself and his lack of effort to make it a success.

Anyone who wants to make money with their web site must know the following critical elements.

1.To be successful your web site must be credible. Screaming out at visitors that they can make a very unbelievable $165,000 a week without effort will immediately turn off most smart people. With just that headline you've already caused visitors to lose interest. Make an effort to create a site that offers credibility and confidence to everyone who reads it. Your products and services should speak to each visitor and how they personally will benefit from them. Of course it goes without saying that what you offer must be of good quality and value to generate interest.

2.To be successful your web site must look professional. Flashing this and flashing that is annoying and the last thing you want to do is annoy a potential customer. Make an effort to ensure that your site is informative, sleek, classy, and graphics are quick to load. Amateur sites are easy to spot and a run-away web site address that just won't end is a dead giveaway. Domain addresses are best (www.yourbusinessname.com) as they convey stability and professionalism immediately to your visitors.

3.To be successful your web site must have a way to gather visitor information. Work at this by offering a Guest Book or Feedback form where visitors can request product or service information, offer you feedback on your site, tell you how they found out about your site, etc. Provide a form where visitors can leave their contact information so you can follow up with them in the future.

4.To be successful your web site must be compelling and interactive. A static one-page site that tells visitors about your company is not enough. Invest some labor in creating a multi-page site that motivates visitors to take action, to click here, to click there, to order today, to contact you today, to enter your contest, to request more information, to explore your site. Once you've got people to respond at your site make sure you work at effectively managing prompt responses to inquiries, order and customer service matters.

5.To be successful your web site must offer visitors easy ways to contact you and this means offering choices. Provide a phone number, fax number, e-mail address, toll free number, and mailing address and place this information in an easy to locate area on your web page. Ideally place it on your home page.

6.To be successful your web site must be promoted. This all-important success factor means that you MUST invest continuos sweat equity in making people aware that your site exists. How do you do this? Register your site with search engines, directories, with free classified sites, and web page indexes. Investigate link exchanges, e-zines, and consider purchasing links, banners or a web site in high traffic malls. You can pay services to do some of this promotion yourself but it's best to know how to do it yourself and continually be on the lookout for more places to promote your site. Afterall the person who cares most about the success of your site is you so accordingly invest in this with time and effort.

To make money with your web site requires ongoing effort on your part to improve it, update it and continually promote it. If you can't develop a site that is professional, if you can't promote it yourself or find ways to do so, then hire someone to assist you with this. Take ownership for the success of your site and be proactive!

Sandi Hunter is Co-Founder of Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com

For all your on and offline design needs, go to World Design Services at http://www.worlddesignservices.com

To get your FREE Banner on 200,000 websites worldwide, go to http://www.worldbannerexchange.com

To get your own Banner Exchange, go to http://www.trafficcenter.com

For unlimited FREE promotion for your website, register it in the World Search Center Search Engine at http://www.worldsearchcenter.com

For a FREE subscription to Worldprofit's Weekly Business and Traffic Building Worldgram e-zine, subscribe here.

WHY GETTING SOMETHING FOR FREE DOESN'T

WHY GETTING SOMETHING FOR FREE DOESN'T

ALWAYS BENEFITYOU BUT REALLY PADS

SOMEONE ELSE'S WALLET.

By Sandi Hunter

Today I received an email, a rather rudely worded email, where a prospect inquired about the services that my company, Worldprofit offers. I replied promptly and politely with detailed answers to his questions. Shortly he replied brushing me off, stating that he could get some of the same services for free and provided the URL where I could see what he was talking about.

Convinced of the good value of the sophisticated services offered to our customers, I went to the URL to see exactly what one got for free at this site.

Once there I was initially impressed with the layout of the site. In a professional manner the site highlighted the services they offered; free classified ad system, free postcard greeting systems and so on. To test the systems I pasted the code for each of these systems on to my site to see how it would function. This was easy to do and the systems worked immediately.

Once the free classified system was installed on my site, I clicked on the link on my homepage to see what would happen. My mouse click transported me to my "new Classified Ad System". But once there what did I see? Indeed, I had a classified ad system but it was like a billboard for the company that had provided me with the system! There was a large banner at the top of the site promoting and linking to some other company I'd never heard of. I noticed too, a large heading promoting the company that I had got the free system from, with a link to their site! My first positive impression began to crumble and it all became clear to me why this company was offering these free systems like the classified ad system. The more people who had the system on their site the more traffic THEY got, and the more banner sales THEY could generate! I was getting something for free while they got all the traffic and the profits from their own banner sales! I was starting to could see how someone unfamiliar with the web and Internet business would mistakenly think that this "Free System" was a good thing, all the while not realizing the motivation of the system provider and the lack of benefit to the user. This is one of the fundamental mistakes new web site owners make, they load up their site with links, and nifty free stuff that simply takes visitors away from their site and makes them NO money.

I returned to the site where I got the system from to see if it was possible to remove the offending banners. I found that is was only possible to change the text colours on the site, the background, and the heading on the page from the company's name to my name. I could not remove the very large banner at the top of the site that linked to someone else's site. I could not use that space to sell my own banners, nor could I promote or link to any of my own products and services on my own site. Really what this "free system" was offering me was a way to send people away from my site and on to someone else's! While getting the system for free I was really sabotaging any sales I could have made on my own site. Of course it's free so you can't really complain can you, but wise people will see the problem with this.

Bottom line: The companies that offer these free classified ad systems, and postcard sites and other similar systems that you can place on your site are doing it for one reason. No, its not simply to offer something free to you and me. If you think that's it you are naïve. They do it for their own personal profit! The more people who get those free systems on their site, the more traffic they get to their site! The more banners they can sell on it, the more money they make in promoting their own products and services. You are the mule in the traffic trade!

Now if you are so bold as to ask so what? I will tell you so what. Remember the old adage you get what you pay for? Well it applies here. If you are content to set up one of these free classified systems on your site and send people out the back door of your site on to someone else's please do.

I hope you will never complain about loss of traffic and lack of profit from your site. However, if you understand the basic premise of what I'm about to say you will become one of the smart folks who truly makes money on the web!

To make money you have to be the one selling the services instead of the one sending people out the back door of your site. You need to be the one who offers the system not the user of it! You need to be the one that offers the system on your own site, the one who sells the banners and pockets the profit yourself, the one who uses the systems to generate traffic to your own site! How do you do this? You buy a classified ad system, a postcard system, a magazine system, or a reminder system, that allows you to do the following:

1) Sell your own banners at the site, not only on the main page but on the categories and directories within the system. See examples at http://www.worldprofit.com/classifieds

http://www.worldprofit.com/reminder

http://www.worldprofit.com/postcards

http://www.worldprofit.com/magazine

2) Sell or promote your own products and services at the system site. Yes, that way when people come in to place and ad or browse the ads they see YOUR products, services, banners, not that of another company! Details here http://www.trafficcenter.com/service_classifieds.htm

3) Use the system on your own site or refer others to buy a system and earn a commission on the referral! Details on this here, http://www.trafficcenter.com It's not enough that you use systems like Free Postcards and Free Classifieds to bring traffic to your site, you also have to be selling banners, ads, links and so on at those sites so you make profit! You are NOT in the business of offering something for free; you are in business to make money! If you aren't doing the latter you will be out of business!

Summary: I want to thank the obnoxious gentleman who let me know about these "Free Services" so that I could investigate them thoroughly. It reminded me that misinformed people don't always compare apples to apples. I've now completely restored my confidence that the systems Worldprofit offers, provide our customers with both traffic generating tools AND profit-making tools!

Yes, customers have to pay for these systems. However, the sophistication of the systems, their ability to be customized, the tech support, and the profit generation centers they offer the customer are not matched by anyone else in the industry. If you'd like free information on these systems so you can judge for yourself go to http://www.trafficcenter.com or contact Sandi Hunter, Director of Web Site Development for Worldprofit at mailto:sandi@worldprofit.com

Sandi Hunter is the Director of Web Site Development for Worldprofit an Internet Service Provider. Get free newsletters, free report and traffic generating tools at http://www.worldprofit.com E-mail Sandi at sandi@worldprofit.com

THE PERILS OF SPAM

THE PERILS OF SPAM

By S. Hunter

Spam, what is it? Spam is an Internet term that refers to the sending of unsolicited e-mail. The formal term is UCE - unsolicited commercial e-mail. In basic terms it means if you send an e-mail message with sales/marketing material to someone who has not asked to receive it, you have just committed spam. If you pay money to a service to send out your message to a list of e-mail addresses, then you have also committed spam.

This week I received 3 more calls from people who had paid money to a provider to send their marketing sales pitch out to 10 million people who "wanted to receive the information" - or so they were led to believe. What happened? One person made the mistake of running an 800 number in the spam ad. The 800 number was besieged with calls - not from prospects, but rather from irritated recipients of the spam message who had called to complain. The person had to have their 800 number disconnected, but not before paying the $1500 phone bill that had been run up - plus the $800 paid to the spam provider. Total sales ZERO, out of pocket expense $2300.

The other 2 people I heard from this week had spent $200 each on a spam mailing, received an average of $25 in sales and had their Internet connections terminated by their provider resulting in additional expense as they changed providers.

These are not isolated incidents, I hear from people every week who've had similar experiences. I have never heard from anyone who has made money marketing their product or service through spam. But why is spam so bad?

#1 - Most spam providers sell you a pitch that they will send your message out to "hand-picked" or "opt-in" lists, or will otherwise convince you these people want to receive your message. In most cases this is not true. The e-mail addresses have been harvested from newsgroup postings or stripped from web sites, and have been sold time and time again to e-mail list brokers. The unknowing buyer (you) falls for the pitch and is soon in trouble with their Internet provider for being a "spammer" and so too, money out of pocket.

#2 - Most spam providers are unscrupulous folks at best. They change Internet providers often, go to great lengths to hide their identity and their physical address, and have been in and out of court for their deviant practices which often involve faking return/reply e-mail addresses and using the mail servers of unsuspecting providers as relay stations.

#3 - Spam slows down the entire Internet network and increases operating expenses meaning higher consumer fees. It is not as some people think, just a matter of "trashing" unwanted e-mail messages you receive. This is seeing the spam problem as an individual problem rather then the larger global problem that it really is. You see, the Internet is a network and spamming effects all users at some level, starting from the many global networks that the messages pass along to get to their destination, all the way down to the recipient.

Time, money and resources are used up trying to catch and prevent spammers who infiltrate mail servers to end their spam messages out. The result is higher cost to you the consumer as providers are forced to add more security to their servers and hire more staff to manage and prevent the problem.

#4 - Finally, spam sent from you the advertiser, is a sure fire sign to the recipient that you are NOT a legitimate company because you are relying on this widely unaccepted practice to get your message out.

Bottom line. Do not use spam to market your product or service, rely on tried, tested and acceptable methods of marketing your products online. For ideas visit www.trafficcenter.com. If you receive e-mail messages that are unsolicited simply deposit them in your e-mail program's "trash bin."

Sandi Hunter is Co-Founder of Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com

For all your on and offline design needs, go to World Design Services at http://www.worlddesignservices.com

To get your FREE Banner on websites worldwide, go to http://www.worldbannerexchange.com

To get your own Banner Exchange, go to http://www.trafficcenter.com

For unlimited FREE promotion for your website, register it in the World Search Center Search Engine at http://www.worldsearchcenter.com

For a FREE subscription to Worldprofit's Weekly Business and Traffic Building Worldgram e-zine, subscribe here.

KNOW YOUR WEBMASTER BEFORE YOU GET

KNOW YOUR WEBMASTER BEFORE YOU GET

LEFT OUT IN THE COLD

by George Kosch, MSc.

It happens so often you'll be amazed; a new domain goes up and another webmaster is called upon. And you can bet that this means trouble if you're not careful. When you decide to purchase a domain you need to be sure that the person who designs and more importantly, maintains your site knows what he or she is doing.

Remember this is the person who will be designing your store with the paramount responsibility of creating a profitable site that is exciting, motivating, and customer oriented. Choosing the wrong webmaster can mean the difference between a site that generates ongoing sales and leads, and one that just sits blankly on the screen begging for some attention. There are thousands of "wanna-be" webmasters out there, here is a checklist of things you MUST confirm before turning over your million-dollar domain storefront.

1. The most important thing to check is previous work. If your prospective webmaster doesn't have any proven previous experience, then move on to the next prospect. Too many people turn the creation of their Internet storefront over to an amateur. An amateur part time webmaster is going to give you a part time amateur site.Is this what you want? Remember, getting sales and leads isn't going to happen with a web page that any 10 year old could create. These amateurs tend to want to dazzle. They create graphic intense sites that blink, flash, and annoy. Concerned with the latest gadgetry they think nothing about the most important reason for the site; you getting sales and prospects! If a site doesn't work right, if it doesn't capture lead information, if it doesn't give folks a reason to visit and come back again, if it doesn't motivate some action by the visitor, then the site is useless and you're wasting your money. The bottom line is to check the previous work of your prospective webmaster.

Have a look at sites they've designed. Do the sites appeal to you as a viewer? Are the sites attractive, easy to navigate, customer centered, quick to load, and generally appealing. Be sure too, to get customer referrals and call them to find out what kind of service these people received and that you can expect.

2. Qualifications in hand and a few nice demo sites later you must watch for the hours of business. Is the webmaster full time with a reasonable amount of clients or is he/she at school, working part-time and doing this as a sort of hobby. The worst thing in the world is having something wrong with your site and none available to repair it. Be sure that the webmaster is a professional and open for business by phone during the day and access able at least by email on the weekends. As your site grows there will be errors here and there. This is normal and should be expected but the key to managing this is the ability to make corrections asap and not be held up for days waiting to see if the webmaster exists anymore.

3. Cost. Here is an interesting question. Do you consider the webmaster who charges $40 an hour or the one who charges $400 an hour? Take points 1 and 2 into account here and be aware that the Internet and webmasters are not regulated. I still can't find a listing for "webmaster" in my phone book, but I can find accountants, lawyers etc. Webmasters don't follow any pay table but there is a way to assess that will never fail; common sense. I know some excellent webmaster's who charge by page and by hour. Look for page rates between $90 to $250. Be sure that includes graphics, fonts and complete navigation throughout the site. Hourly rates are around $65 - $99.

4. Last but not least. Watch for the prospective webmaster that says:"Yeah, this web stuff is easy. Did you know I'm a database mainframe cobol guy? This web html is sooooo easy I'm sure I can handle it."or the tech talker

"You know I specialize in activeX and dbase front ends like Access. I will make you a chat room, web board, moving video, and streaming audio. Oh, by the way, what did you say your site was going to be about?"

These people can mean the death of a site. I have personally worked with a dozen or so of them in my time on the web. Where are they now? Back in the basements of their houses getting Alex9000 to come back to life. Or they are the ones that have created the sites that crash your browser every time you try to access the site.

The webmaster you choose needs to be focused on making YOUR site appeal to the majority, to bring you business, and not be only for the technically enabled. Many a successful techhead has learned this little gem of knowledge the hard way. Be sure you quiz your webmaster on their view of the web as a marketing tool. Armed with this checklist you should be better able to assess your future webmaster and develop a profit making web site.

George Kosch is Co-Founder of Worldprofit at http://www.worldprofit.com

For all your on and offline design needs, go to World Design Services at http://www.worlddesignservices.com.

To get your FREE Banner on websites worldwide, go to http://www.worldbannerexchange.com.

To get your own Banner Exchange, go to http://www.trafficcenter.com.

For unlimited FREE promotion for your website, register it in the World Search Center Search Engine at http://www.worldsearchcenter.com.

For a FREE subscription to Worldprofit's Weekly Business and Traffic Building Worldgram e-zine, subscribe here.