Drug dealer, 44, who spent millions on luxury cars, watches and lavish getaways jailed for 25 years for trafficking a TON of cocaine Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2549559/Drug-dealer-44-spent-millions-luxury-cars-designer-clothes-lavish-getaways-sentenced-25-years-trafficking-TON-cocaine.html#ixzz3lpW1F1dG Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

High life: Garnett Gilbert Smith, 44, has been sentenced to 25 years for drug trafficking

Pics of Super Star Rajnikants home

SEO Tips for Small Business

See These 10 Tips for Better Small Business SEO

When it comes down to ranking your site’s page in the local rankings, it’s obvious that you need to do some basic SEO in order to compete.

Fortunately for us, there are clear guidelines that will help you rank your pages better, and most of them are doable without being the head geek at Google.

Let’s look at 10 small business SEO tips that will help you rank your pages and sites better.

10 SEO tips for small businesses

Create substantial content – Being sure that you give your readers meaty, compelling content that they can use is job #1. Google favors longer text, so shoot for at least 750-1250 words per page.

Simplify your URLs – Crafting simple and descriptive URLs make it easy for people to understand the content of your page by merely looking at the URL. Consider using primary page keyword in there too.

Have a keyword strategy – Know which keywords you want to rank for, make each page focus on one primary keyword, and keep your keyword density on the page low, between 1-3%.

Make a Google My Business account – This is Google’s most recent local business initiative. It includes things like Google+, Maps and much more. If you hope to do well in your local rankings, you’ll need to make sure this is optimized and complete.

Optimize for mobile – Never more essential than now, as Google announced that beginning April 21st, 2015, they will penalize non-mobile friendly sites on all mobile search results, which is about 50% of total web traffic today. Don’t be left out! If you aren’t sure if your sites are mobile-friendly, check them out in the free tool that Google has provided: Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

Optimize images – Making sure your images have accurate (not-keyword stuffed) ALT tags, as this is a ranking signal in the search algorithm.

Mind your NAP data – Make certain that the information you present to the world is consistent across all your web platforms. Get all names, addresses and phones, along with any other identifying info straight.

Generate user reviews – Encourage your customers and users to leave a positive reveiws for you, especially on Google+, as this will have a large effect on where you rank.

Meta data – Ensure that each web page has optimized Meta data, in particular title tags, description, along with only 1 H1 tag per page.

Take advantage of Google Analytics – As well as Google Webmaster Tools! They are an excellent way to get intelligence on how your site is performing and where you can do better.

How to sell on Snapdeal

Snapdeal founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal is India’s largest online marketplace offering more than four million products across a range of categories from over 50,000 sellers. Snapdeal witnessed record amounts of sales during the recently held sale day, crossing Rs. 1 crore of sales every minute. With more and more people shopping online, ecommerce continues to be one of the fastest growing industries with plenty of opportunities. Selling through online marketplaces like Snapdeal, Flipkart or Amazon can help established businesses quickly find customers without having to worry about technology or marketing. In this article we look at how to sell on Snapdeal and Snapdeal seller registration process.

Selling on Snapdeal – Documents & Registration Required

Before beginning to sell on Snapdeal, the business must first become a Snapdeal Seller by completing the registration process and submitting the required documents. If an established business proposes to sell on Snapdeal, the seller registration process can be completed quickly as the business may have the required tax registrations. On the other hand, if the Snapdeal seller is a new business or if the seller would like to use a new entity, certain tax registrations must be obtained prior to selling on Snapdeal.

Business Registration (May not be required for established businesses)

PAN Card, TIN Registration and Bank Account – in the name of the business is required to complete the Snapdeal seller registration process. Therefore, a Private Limited Company or Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) can be started, if an established business entity is not readily available during the seller registration process. Both Private Limited Company and Limited Liability Partnerships offer the promoters limited liability protection and are a separate legal entity – that can be scaled or transferred. It is however recommended that ecommerce sellers start a private limited company, as it offers the ability to quickly scale up and also easily access bank or equity funding. LLPs on the other hand have restrictions while raising bank or equity funding, and therefore not recommended.

PAN Card

Permanent Account Number or PAN card copy must be submitted bearing the name of the businesses during the Snapdeal seller registration process. Both, Private Limited Company and Limited Liability Partnerships would have PAN Card in the name of the business. Proprietorship’s would have PAN card only in the name of the Proprietor.

TIN Registration

TIN Registration also known as VAT Registration or Sales Tax Registration is required to begin selling on Snapdeal. TIN registration is required for any person or entity selling goods or services in India – both offline or online. Therefore, TIN Registration must be obtained by applying to the relevant State Authorities prior to selling on Snapdeal. Entities without TIN Registration can only sell handicrafts, books, online education or unstitched fabrics.

Bank Account

A copy of cancelled cheque must be submitted to Snapdeal during the Snapdeal seller registration process. The bank account must be in the name of the business. Private limited companies and LLPs can both easily open bank accounts in the name of the business by submitting certificate of incorporation and PAN card. Opening a bank account in the name of the business is cumbersome for a proprietorship, as existence of the business must be proved through other tax or business registrations. More information about opening a bank account in India.

Snapdeal Seller Registration

How to sell on Snapdeal

To begin the Snapdeal Seller Registration process, visit Snapdeal Seller Homepage. During the seller registration process, information such as name, phone number, email and address will have to be provided and verified. In addition to the demographic information, a copy of the PAN card, copy of TIN registration certificate and a copy of cancelled cheque must also be submitted. Once submitted, the documents and information submitted will be verified and approved by a Snapdeal representative.

To incorporate a private limited company or LLP, visit IndiaFilings.com

Creating an Ecommerce website

Creating an Ecommerce Website
By Wil Brown

Selling products on-line requires a very different setup from your run-of-the-mill blogging site. Lets look at the things you'll need to think about when setting up an eCommerce website and help to explain why they cost more to design.

First let me tell you what we're not going to cover in this article.

We're not assuming that an eCommerce website is a single web page with some PayPal button codes inserted onto it.

The PayPal buttons are great and work very well for those selling a handful of items, but we're taking eCommerce to the next level and giving the customer a better on-line shopping experience.

Most modern eCommerce website are applications. They have a user interface, administration settings, store data in a database and follow a work-flow of processes. We're going to touch on some of these areas.

The Basics
An eCommerce website can be thought of as a play with actors performing it's scenes.

The main actors in an eCommerce website are:

* The Customer - buys products
* The Website Owner - ships bought products & gets paid
* The eCommerce Application - interface between all the actors
* The Payment Gateway - handles payment transactions (more on this later)
* The Merchant/Business Bank Account - Website owner's business bank account (more on this later)

The main buying process of an eCommerce website ('the play') happens as follows:

1. Customer browses product catalogue
2. Customer adds product to basket
3. Customer buys product and enters check-out process
4. eCommerce Application contacts a Payment Gateway
5. Payment Gateway provides secure customer shipping and payment details entry form
6. Customer securely enters shipping and payment information
7. Payment Gateway contacts Website Owners' Merchant Bank Account
8. Merchant Bank Account processes payment transaction and returns control to Payment Gateway
9. Payment Gateway returns Customer to eCommerce Application
10. eCommerce Application notifies Customer of successful (or failed) payment
11. eCommerce Application notifies Website Owner of purchase
12. Website Owner ships product to Customer

Of course there's a lot more detail going on in each step, but hopefully you get the general idea that setting up an eCommerce application is a tad more complicated than your regular blog-style website.

Where Do You Start?
Sounds silly right, but the first step you need to do is think about the types of things you'll be selling on-line.

Are these products?, i.e. physical items that require packaging and posting or services provided by yourself or another provider e.g. Professional Yak Grooming.

How may products or types of services are you going to offer? Local or International? Are some seasonal? Do you have a finite stock level for particular items? Do you plan to use special offers & discounts? Do you even like yaks?

This leads to customer and payment questions.

Who are your customers? Where are they? How are they going to pay; credit card, cheque, PayPal? Which bank account will I need to set up?

And then there are the support questions.

How do you handle returned goods? How do you refund payments? How do you handle complaints?

Having a think about the products and services you're going to offer is vital because the first thing a web designer is going to ask you when you're requesting a quote is "How many things are you selling and to whom?"

The reason is of course time and costs.

Selling 50 products to a UK only customer base using PayPal requires a very different setup and hence costs, to one selling 1000+ products internationally and taking credit card payments.

Lets look closer at some of the important eCommerce application areas.

The eCommerce Application
Essentially, an eCommerce application is a bespoke Content Management System (CMS). So as well as updating posts and blogs it specialises in updating products and services and supporting commerce functions.

Like any CMS, the application splits the eCommerce website into two major parts; the front-end or shop-front where the customer can browse and buy goods and the back-end where you login to an administration dashboard and manage the website options, including the product catalogue.

The Product Catalogue
This will likely be your most important concern and is central to any eCommerce website design.

The product catalogue is where all your goods-for-sale data lives. The product name, description, cost, stock level, pictures etc. are all stored in here.

We sometimes get people asking which files their products are stored in and they get in bit of a tizzy when they can't find them on the server.

Usually, product catalogues are stored in a database, but don't worry - you don't have to know how to use a database. The eCommerce application does that for you through the product catalogue interface in the Administration Dashboard.

Being able to manage this yourself is vital, otherwise you'll be going back and forward to the web developer and the costs will rack up.

Thankfully, the eCommerce applications that we use, Magento and Wordpress e-Commerce, once installed, allow you to manage your own product catalogue from within the web browser.

The Magento product catalogue has advanced options and allows for things like adding discount codes, customer reviews, product videos etc., whereas the Wordpress e-Commerce catalogue offers a simpler solution while still covering the essential requirements you'll need to sell stuff on-line.

So how do you go about entering and updating all this product information?

The Admin Dashboard
Accessing a special web page on your site and entering a username and password will take you to the options part of your eCommerce website. This is commonly known as the Admin Dashboard.

Here, you will be able to update almost every aspect of the website including accessing the product catalogue, shipping costs, currency exchange rates, payment gateways, sales reports etc.

Whichever eCommerce solution you choose from us, we'll setup some or all of your product catalogue and make sure that customers can purchase items and that you get paid through a payment gateway (more on that late

The Shop Design
Of course your shop will need a look and feel to fit in with your business brand.

Again, just like other CMS's a web designer will be needed to develop a theme or template which will transform the default shop-front into whatever design you have in mind for your customers.

Themes can be bought off-the-shelf for both Wordpress e-Commere and Magento and you can apply these yourself, however, you may prefer to have a design exactly the way you imagined it and different from any of your competitors.

Themes are applied from the Administration Dashboard. You may be able to change a few aspects of the theme, such as your logo, background colour, text colour, however, you're not going to be able to move parts of the theme around to different areas of the screen. A web designer will need to do this by updating the theme's code.

Domain Name and Website Hosting
You will of course need a domain name to trade with and a hosting plan to store the website files and databases.

It's usually best not to purchase a hosting plan until you've spoken to a web designer and they have given you an idea of the best solution to implement.

Many of the cheaper hosting plans that are offered to you when purchasing a domain name, do not support databases or database applications. They may charge an extra setup and yearly fee for setting this up.

So try to avoid buying a hosting plan until you talk to a web designer and have an idea of the type of eCommerce solution you'll need to implement your ideas.

Merchant Bank Accounts vs Business Bank Accounts
Certainly in the UK, you must have a business bank account to legally trade as a business.

Business bank accounts can be used just fine with an eCommerce application but you will need to setup a Payment Gateway service to handle the payment transactions and get the customers money into your bank account.

If you're opening up a business bank account and your account manager knows you're going to be running an eCommerce website you may be offered a merchant bank account which is a specialised version of the business account.

The merchant account gives you a Merchant ID number and access to a Payment Gateway service that the bank uses or owns.

It's likely you'll need to pay for the setup of a merchant account and it will incur fees, usually on a per-transaction basis.

If you have already setup a merchant account then you will need to make sure your eCommerce application can support the particular payment gateway your bank has given you access to, otherwise you won't get your money.

e.g. Lloyds TSB uses the Cardnet merchant payment gateway. Royal Bank of Scotland uses the WorldPay merchant payment gateway.

If you were a Royal Bank of Scotland business customer with a merchant account, you would need to make sure your eCommerce application supported the WorldPay gateway.

You don't need to use the particular merchant account that your business bank offers to trade on-line, but you do need a payment gateway of some sort to handle payments.

That leads us nicely onto payment gateways.

Payment Gateways
We've touched on this in the previous section. Essentially, a merchant bank account will give you a payment gateway to use, but you're limited to just the one that your business bank is affiliated with.

A payment gateway is a service offered by a company.

It handles the payment part of the eCommerce application when a customer proceeds to the checkout to purchase an item.

The payment gateway collects the customers details and payment information securely and contacts your business bank account to complete the money transaction.

This is great for security too as your customers banking details aren't kept on your eCommerce website, so that's one less thing to worry about securing.

There are many different payment gateway services with different features and options. As a supplied service they all charge a fee for their use. The fees can include a setup charge and a % commission of the total price of a transaction.

Some payment gateways allow you to pay a monthly or annual fee if your number of transactions are high. This can work out more cost effective for you if your single transactions are high volume but low individual cost.

You've probably heard of some of the more well known gateway service providers and not known what they. You've also likely used them without even realising they are there. Some of the popular payment gateways are:
PayPal, Google Checkout, SagePay, WorldPay and ChronoPay.

It's great that you have a choice and the services are very competitively priced so take some time to check out which is best for your business model. If you need some help, we'd be happy to meet up and walk you through the options.

Some payment gateways offer two types of general services; hosted and inclusive.

Hosted Payment Gateways
These options usually don't require a set-up or monthly fee, however, transaction costs can be higher than an inclusive service.

The PayPal Website Payments Standard service is a good example of this.

Essentially, it limits your customers to having a PayPal account (they must register with the PayPal site) and when it comes to check-out, the customers are transferred from your eCommerce website to the PayPal website for the information gathering and payment transaction, then upon completion redirected back to your eCommerce website.

The downside of this method is really from a branding point of view. You have very limited control of how the payment gateway service, PayPal in this case, looks and operates before it redirects back to your website.

Some customers can be put off by redirecting to another site as confidence in security can be questioned (although PayPal in this instance has a very good reputation).

You're also limiting the payment method to just those customers who are willing to use the payment gateway's choice of payment. In this case, the customer must have a registered PayPal account.

A similar process happens if you use the Google Checkout payment gateway.

So what's the other option?

Inclusive Payment Gateways
Inclusive payment gateways will allow your customers to go through the whole checkout process without (the appearance of) leaving your branded eCommerce website.

I added in "the appearance of" because in some cases your customers will actually leave your website and use the payment gateway service, however, the way it is implemented and embedded makes it looks as if it's all part of your website and business brand.

So what's the catch?

There's usually a setup fee, a minimum subscription period (say 12 months), a monthly fee and of course a whole heap of conditions that apply.

Some particular conditions to look out for are thresholds on the number of transactions per month, or total monthly funds transferred. Payment gateway services can charge extra or insist you upgrade your service if these thresholds are exceeded in a similar way that mobile phone companies will charge you extra if you use up all your inclusive talk or SMS time.

The best benefit of using an inclusive payment gateway is that the whole customer experience from browsing to payment is hosted on your own website. This gives the customer a greater sense of confidence that their data will be kept safe and makes your whole business look and feel more professional.

A good example of this type of service is the PayPal Web Payments Pro.

Securing The Data
If you're using a payment gateway then the good news is it's unlikely you'll be storing sensitive customer payment details on your eCommerce website.

Those types of data will be kept securely in your payment gateway account.

Of course you will be collecting a whole lot of other important and confidential customer information such as name, email, perhaps address, likes, dislikes, a username and password for your site.

All this information needs to be kept secure and your eCommerce application will help with that. The Administration Dashboard will have lots of sections that control who and what can see parts of the collected data.

But that's not the only security you'll have to think about. Do you know what happens when you fill out a form on a website and click on submit?

If you have a look at the top of the web browser in the address bar you'll see the website's URL address. Most sites will start with http://

(For those that want to know, URL stands for Uniform Resource Location and HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)

Any web page starting with http:// is transferring data to and from a web server in Plain Text.

This means, that the web page contents, code, images, text, form data are all sent in a format that's readable to humans. OK, it may not be that readable, but in essence all the information is there in English characters (or whatever language character set your website uses).

Now for some more techie stuff.

When your web page is sent to or received from a web server, there isn't a 1-to-1 direct connection between your website and the server. The web page data is transferred through hundreds of networks across different countries and through thousands of routing computers and other network devices before arriving at your computer.

This means that at any point during it's travel, your web page data has the potential to be intercepted and read by whomever.

There isn't much you can do about the interception part but there is something you can do to make it a darn lot harder for somebody to read and use your eCommerce web page data.

SSL Certificates
Now we're talking.

Let's skip the techie bit and quickly tell you what these are and what they do.

You buy an SSL certificate from a web hosting company (annual renewal most likely), install it into your eCommerce website and it encrypts your web page data. Hooorah!

You'll now notice that parts of your website, likely those that require personal form data to be collected and sent, now start with https://

The addition of that little "s" letter, standing for "Secure", means that the web page data is encrypted when sent and decoded only at the two end-points; your computer and a web server.

Anyone reading the page in between will see garbled non-readable characters.

You may also see additional signs of a secured web page such as a closed padlock icon.

We would strongly advise you buy an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and get this installed and configured for use with your hosting account and eCommerce website.

In Summary
Creating an eCommerce website requires a fair amount of planning.

You'll need a good web design and web development team to implement your business venture.

It will cost you more and take longer to create than a regular blog or brochure-ware website because of all the design and setup.

You'll make money - and that's what's it's all about after all...

We hope this helps you start your eCommerce website journey. Of course there's a heap of things we just didn't have the time to cover.

Learn more about eCommerce at our website.

Wil Brown is the founder of Gravitational FX, a web design and development company based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
For more of his articles on web design, development, SEO and internet marketing, visit our blog at www.gravitationalfx.com/blog.

�Gravitational FX. All rights reserved everywhere.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wil_Brown
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How to Make Money Online

How to Make Money Online
By Sunil S S

'How to make money online' is not exactly a state secret since there are so many entrepreneurs who seem to be doing it with ease. Making money online is not hard especially with the business offers being posted all across the net.

The first thing that you should work out is what you are looking out for and what you are able to do. Online opportunities vary by payment rate as well as the project itself. Some can be done even by a high school student where as there are those that require a certain degree of 'skills' on your part.

'How to make money online' seems to be one of the most common queries on the Internet these days. Naturally, everyone wants to get into the game since it is so easy to make money online these days. The competition for these online jobs is ever increasing and sometimes a bit ruthless as well.

Generally however, the competition seems to be more for the 'skilled' projects as opposed to the 'basic' ones; this is probably on account of the pay difference between the two. Online opportunities are basically suited for those who are able to do a bit of moonlighting or for those currently without any proper career job, e.g. the work at home moms. But today, on account of the income that these online opportunities generate, some of them have taken to this as a full time career option.

Online income has come to be recognized as a legitimate source of income with many countries offering tax rebates as a way of encouraging online entrepreneurship. It is a lucrative market and as such, the competition is getting all the more intensive. Taking online opportunities may sound easy but it is not a cakewalk. First of all, you require a firm commitment to make a go of things. That said you need to be the professional at all times, remember that an online job is just like any other job that you may have done earlier.

There is a client that you need to impress by doing a good job altogether and if you do that, then chances are that he or she is going to do a 'repeat project' with you again. It goes without saying that a satisfied customer will want to hire you again especially when it comes to online opportunities. Remember to honor any commitments you may have made to the client and keep to the deadline that you and your client may have agreed to for the project timeline. The field is open and the range of online projects is quite vast, with most of them requiring just basic user knowledge of the Internet.

There are quite a few e-books available on the Internet titled 'how to make money online' and get this, these books are not free and come with a price tag. Get it, some one is trying to make money by selling e-books on how to make money online, in simple words trying to sell an e-book on 'milking the cow' while actually doing it. You can chose an easy online opportunity and generally ease your way into the whole 'online opportunities' scene.

One very easy opportunity you or anyone else can pursue these days is to do 'paid online surveys' and 'doing trial offers' for companies. Both of these opportunities are quite easy to do and can be completed by anyone in a matter of minutes. In addition, with trial offers, you can sometimes avail yourself a bonus gift along with the demo and the rewards that the offer comes with. The Internet is a vast medium and it may take a while to catch up with the rest of the world. But you can start by taking online surveys or taking up some of these companies on their trial offers for free and making money out of it. If you do it properly you can turn it into a part time or full time business from home.

Making anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 extra per month is not unheard of. I myself am between those ranges. You can see some of my sample checks on my website. You can also sign up for my free newsletter which will explain to you how people all over the world are making money by helping provide valuable feedback to fortune 500 companies. In addition, I have pre screened most survey companies and have provided only the top paying ones. Anyone can do it and it is absolutely free. There are no tricks, all you need is some time and you can generate a solid income on the side.

Sunil S. is a successful Corporate America professional turned Internet Entrepreneur. He generates income online from 6 different revenue streams including Google AdSense, affiliate and referral marketing, vendor ads, e-products and paid online surveys. His expertise is focused on entrepreneurship and small business and he often preaches taking your passion online and turning it into a solid paying business no matter what that passion is.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sunil_S_S
http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Make-Money-Online&id=1611169

Create your online store

SaleHoo Stores is our most lucrative affiliate offer. Each month, customers are charged a monthly fee, and you get 50% commission (minus ClickBank fees) on this. Here is how much you make per month for each pricing plan:

• Basic: $11.99
• Standard: $21.24
• Premium: $44.37

SaleHoo Stores helps members create a beautiful-looking online store without any technical knowledge. In addition, Standard and Premium members get access to our SaleHoo directory.

Table of Contents

 

• Product Overview
• Email Swipes
• Example Review
• Banners and Graphics

Product Overview

 

Key Benefits

• No technical knowledge required: SaleHoo Stores lets customers create a beautiful-looking e-commerce store with no technical or design knowledge required. Our push-button website creator is incredibly easy to use.
• An all-inclusive package with no hidden fees: SaleHoo Stores includes everything customers need to create and manage their own online store (except for the domain name) - meaning they don’t have to purchase anything else.
• Support staff that care about their stores: Even though SaleHoo Stores are easy to use and update, we have an extensive, experienced support team that answer emails and forum posts with personalized advice.

 

What Is Included

• An online store website creator that is easy to use.
• Monthly web hosting.
• Custom email accounts.
• Email, forum and phone support.
• Free $100 Google adwords voucher which they can use to start driving traffic.
• Each stores gets a free, custom logo created by one of our designers.
• Search engine optimization tools.
• Standard & Premium only: Access to SaleHoo Directory & Market Research Lab.
• Premium only: Digital product processing.
• Premium only: Video training on generating traffic for e-commerce stores.

 

Who Is It For?

• Online sellers that are tired of paying selling fees (e.g. from eBay or Amazon), and want to start their own store and be in control.
• People that want to create an e-commerce store, but don’t have the technical or design knowledge to do so.

How to start online business from home in india

Online Selling Tactics Resources

Keeping ahead of the pack is a full-time business, and that's true now more than ever in the online selling business. The competition is fierce, mainly because it's so easy to start an online store. It also doesn't hurt that technological innovations are making it easier for consumers to buy online and keeping online sellers on their toes to keep updated.

You really can't afford to rest on your laurels. If you've been struggling, then it's time to make a change. Here are 12 predictions and trends to help you survive—and hopefully thrive—in the months ahead.

1. Better Quality Control Will Become a Priority

With retailers struggling to rise above the crowd, it's no longer enough that the ordered product just be delivered. Successful retailers will endeavor to exert more control over the quality of the product and excellence of fulfillment, i.e. fast home delivery. Amazon's already on top of this trend with same-day delivery in select locations.

2. Data Analysis Will Become More Important

Retailers understand that analyzing customer data can provide valuable insight into how to improve their conversions, but surprisingly few businesses actually use the information. In 2015, this oversight could become a much bigger problem, as proactive retailers seize every advantage that will curry favor with consumers.

For example, data analytics can be used to deliver customized offers to buyers for products they're likely to buy, based on previous purchases and search patterns. Retailers that fail to make use of data analytics will experience a major slowdown in conversion.

3. Emphasis on Social Responsibility

Consumers are going to favor retailers that initiate programs promoting social responsibility. This may be due to the recent recession that's made buyers more aware of how hard it is to live in a struggling economy. It will become increasingly important for buyers that retailers give back to their communities.

Even if it is just a small pledge to a charity, cause marketing can have a big impact on your business. Keep this in mind when you next make your promotional calendar.

4. From Global to Local

Another shift in focus will benefit shrewd online retailers in 2015, particularly those intent on building their brand identity. While the global market is still the big playground, the local community is the perfect big fish-little pond scenario. Retailers that have a local presence, e.g., participation in trade fairs or exclusive offers to local residents, will see more sales overall.

5. Loyalty Cards Will Become Passé

You want to foster loyalty among your buyers, but the lure of reward points for your purchases is not going to cut it anymore in 2015. Too many retailers are doing it, and it will be hard for small retailers to compete point-for-point with the big boys. You have to come up with another way to encourage buyers to keep coming back.

6. Millenials Will Dominate, But Baby Boomers are Still a Force to be Reckoned With

We've discussed Millennials quite extensively on this blog. If you've missed the discussion, you should give it a look. This demographic, more than any other, will continue to dominate the retail scene. However, it would be a mistake to ignore the needs of Baby Boomers (the youngest members of this group are just turning 60), who may not be as tech-savvy as Millennials, but are more likely to make an impulse purchase.

At least they will be more likely so long as the purchasing process is made easy enough for them. Take measures to make the UX of your online selling business as easy and convenient as possible for both generations.

7. Omni-Channel Selling Will Go From Online to Offline

Brick-and-mortar (BAM) retailers had learned the wisdom of having an online presence to capture the online market. The year 2015 will see more online-only retailers with BAM outlets to service the offline market. Not all online store owners will have the capacity to do this in 2015, but it is something that should be in future plans, especially for sellers who have successfully built up their brand.

8. Online Selling Businesses with BAM Locations Will Thrive

Online selling businesses that have already embraced omni-channel strategies will continue to have more success than single-channel counterparts. It offers customers the choice to do their shopping online but complete the purchase offline, and vice versa. It saves time and effort, and that's a premium service in the eyes of many buyers.

9. Security Fears Will Intensify

The main hurdle for many prospective buyers is their fear that their sensitive personal and financial information may be hacked. The increase in security breaches in 2014 is expected to spill over to 2015, making consumers more reluctant to patronize small retailers. Make plans to ramp up your site's security features, and make those efforts more obvious. Prominently featuring security badges on your site will reassure the fence-sitters and minimize shopping cart abandonment.

10. Social Networks will Slowly Become a Preferred Shopping Destination

The influence of social networks on conversion is old news, but the recent push by top sites to make it easy for members to buy products in-site is likely to pick up momentum in 2015. It is crucial to become familiar with how to offer your products for sale on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Doing so will offer buyers a seamless shopping experience they're sure to appreciate.

11. The Mobile Market Will Grow…Of Course

The mobile market has been going like a runaway train for a couple of years now, and 2015 is not going to be any different. The competition among mobile payment solutions, in particular, will be an interesting development to watch — and prepare for.

12. Wearables and New Technology Will Have More Market Saturation

Compatibility has always been an issue for online retailers. Now that most online retailers have figured out that they need to make their webstores display well on mobile gadgets, the next step is to experiment with these newer technologies such as smartwatches. Some online retailers will also need to be forward-thinking in improving the convenience and ease of the customer experience by providing features such as interactive window displays.

Some of these predictions may already be happening as the first quarter of the year draws to a close. It is not too late to start, however. The online selling business is not going to get any easier so the earlier you start making improvements, the better.

Have you noticed a big change we've neglected? Why don't you share your predictions for 2015 and beyond in the comments section?

10 Ways to make money on the internet

The following article details my personal top 10 methods to make money from the Internet.

What makes this list unique is it’s based entirely on the methods I have personally used, so I can reveal to you what I did and what my results were. Bear in mind these methods represent ten years of working online, so I do not do all of them presently. At one point in my career however they were an income stream, and are still viable options for you.

This is not an all inclusive list, which means there are plenty of other ways you can make money, no doubt many of which are potentially much more profitable or better choices for your own situation. As a result you shouldn’t base your decisions on what methods you use solely on this list. Do your research and include this article as one resource.

This list isn’t strictly ordered based on my preferences from top to bottom. What I’ve done is listed the different things I did in a chronology of time of when I did them. It’s no coincidence however that as we get closer to the present (the end of the list), the more I personally like the method as part of Top ways to make money online and offline, and hence still use it. Over the years I made changes to how I made money in order to get closer to what I really wanted from my business.

What Is My Ideal Way To Make Money Online?

To help you understand what I was striving for, here are my main criteria when deciding what methods I use to make money online with. Bear in mind certain options only became available as a result of previous experience. Some things you can only do once you’ve done other things because you build on what you have done before.

In a nutshell, this is the criteria I concluded are important to me –

Can you make a solid profit margin?

As you will see in a moment when I reveal my top ten methods, some income streams have very slim margins, which means you must push through a lot of volume in order to make significant income. While not always the case, in most situations to sell more requires more work, more resources and generally more of everything, which results in violation of my next rule…

Can you maintain the income with minimal labour and/or is it easy to outsource?

I look for income streams that do not require significant amounts of work to maintain. If I need to drastically increase the amount of product I sell or customers I attract to make good money, and that requires more of my own time to achieve, or cannot be easily outsourced to others (it often increases your labor just to organize outsourcers, so don’t assume outsourcing is a magic solution), that’s not the method for me.

Is there potential to scale?

As per the previous point, often the logistics of growth makes a method unappealing to me, however I do want the income streams I go after to have the potential to scale, and scale big. This means if you do discover something that makes you money, the possibility to grow it to a life changing amount of money is a reality, and you understand how this can happen.

Is there passive income potential?

In most cases I prefer something that is more potentially passive than potentially scalable. Obviously it’s great to have everything, but given the choice I prefer income streams that just work and can be automated so you can do other things. You have to be careful to manage your desire to scale something with your desire to make it passive. Sometimes less is more because less gives you freedom.

Can you create a sellable asset?

The final point is really important to me because I know that my interest tends to fluctuate. Every five years or so I feel like moving on to something new and leaving my main project. In the case of business, I want to ensure that there is a profitable exit strategy. The better you meet the previous criteria (profit margin, automated, scaleable and passive), the more money you can make when it is time to sell.

I Look For The “Holy Trinity” Income Method

I’ve written before about my quest for the holy trinity of a business model, one that delivers what I consider the three most important outcomes from a business –

1. You make significant PROFIT
2. The income can be made as close to PASSIVE as possible
3. You have PASSION about some aspect of the business

Or phrased another way, my business should enable the following –

1. Consistent Income
2. Free Time (thanks to income automation, business model simplicity or large capital gain)
3. Meaning and Purpose (development of your passion and reason for being on this planet)

So now you know my main criteria that has driven me to test different income streams over the past decade. Now let me introduce you to exactly what those income streams are…

My Top 10 Ways To Make Money Online

1. Sell On Ebay

During my pre-teen and early teenage years I went from playing with Transformers, GI-Joe and LEGO, to playing Nintendo, Sega and Gameboy. Eventually I added the card game Magic: The Gathering to the mix at about 16 years of age. All of these things were passions for me at various stages of growing up, but one thing remained consistent throughout each stage; I traded and sold toys and games I no longer wanted to make extra cash.

In Brisbane where I live, before the Internet there was a newspaper called the Trading Post that was published every two weeks. It was an aftermarket for pretty much everything. Whenever I grew tired of a game or a toy I’d sell it via the Trading Post, usually in an effort to make enough money to buy the new toy or game I had in my sights.

Eventually the Internet came along and the Trading Post no longer commanded the secondhand market like it once did (though it did successfully transition online). It quickly became clear that eBay was the winner when it came to secondhand commerce online. As a result my first experience making any money from the Internet was selling old games, toys and electronics on eBay.

EBay is still I believe the best way to gain experience making money from the Internet for two reasons –

1. You are pretty much guaranteed to make some kind of sale and thus experience a transaction
2. EBay has the traffic, so you don’t have to worry about marketing your product beyond creating a good listing, the eye-balls are already there

These two reasons make eBay a great first stop because you will learn how to list something for sale online, how to take money (possibly your first experience with PayPal) and about the importance of things like titles and copywriting, if you spend the time to study how to make your eBay listings convert better.

The best thing about eBay – the abundant traffic – is also the worst thing. Barriers to entry are low on eBay, meaning competition is fierce. When competition is fierce, profit margin is slim. Unless you can find some form of competitive advantage through your supply chain, how you create listings, or you have a means to increase volume, you’re not going retire rich thanks to eBay.

I spent quite a bit of time studying eBay, both as a business model and as a means to capture new customers because of how much buying traffic is there. There is no doubt that eBay is a fantastic website that represents a huge potential to make money, but in my case I wasn’t keen to build my business there, it didn’t match enough of my criteria.

However eBay is a fantastic way to make quick money, even just as a way to turn your old items into cash to start a new online venture. If you’re brand new to Internet marketing and you don’t know your PayPal’s from your Clickbanks, or your PPC from your SEO, eBay is definitely a great place to learn some basics.

2. Sell products in forums, bulletin boards, classifieds and other community type sites

The card game Magic: The Gathering was a big part of my life from the end of highschool to the beginning of university. Although initially I was just a casual player and then tournament player, I quickly became a card trader and really enjoyed the wheeling and dealing. Although my interest in playing the game wained, most of my early projects online were connected with the game.

Before having my own website, I spent time reading websites, newsgroups, bulletin boards and forums about the game, and eventually started trading online. Back before search engines were any good most of my time was spent in particular Magic newsgroups, some that talked strategy, and some that were focused specifically on trading and/or buying and selling cards.

I managed to make spare change selling my cards through these sites. The main reason I could make any money was because I would win cards in tournaments, hence I had a supply source that would result in a good profit margin. Of course this wasn’t sustainable unless I kept placing well in tournaments, nor was it really scalable unless I started buying in cards from other sources.

I stopped using this method once I started my own card game site (more on this below), however I still believe niche collectables, particularly in a market that you really love, is a fantastic starting point to gain experience making money online. Like eBay you can make money selling secondhand items in community sites if you can find a way to source product at cost or below. It’s not a model that has much margin so again the challenge is to scale if you want to make significant profit.

3. Sell products from your own website

My first successful website was about the card game Magic: The Gathering. At first the site was just a hobby with articles written by me and a few friends. Eventually as traffic grew I began making some money with the site.

Since I was already a card trader it made sense that my Magic site have a Magic card store. At first I stocked the website with my own cards, and eventually added retail “sealed” (unopened packs of cards) by buying product at wholesale from a company in Sydney.

It was a very simple card shop made up of text listings of the cards I had for sale, the quantity available and the cost per card or per pack. I maintained the inventory myself from my room, sorting and listing cards online by hand using plain text. I didn’t use any software and most of the payments I received back then was via check or money order in the mail. Some kids would even send money and even coins (!) in the mail to pay for their purchase.

My business did well enough, although the manual labor was intense. Maintaining inventory lists, packing cards into envelopes and daily trips to the post office was not always the most fun way to spend my time, though I did enjoy having my own little business while in university.

Unfortunately my store was hit by credit card fraud when I foolishly sold a significant amount of product to an unknown person in Thailand. This experience was enough for me to decide that I had had enough of running a Magic shop and it was time to move on. You can read about the credit card fraud experience here – Yaro Starak Timeline – Part 2

Selling Products Online Is A Big Opportunity

My first three experiences of making money from the Internet all involve some kind of physical product. Online commerce obviously represents a huge opportunity to make money online, and having your own product or a passion for a product that you can source can lead to big profits.

You can sell product from your own website store, via community sites and classifieds (like Craigslist) and of course eBay and collectively make good money. The challenge, like with any business, is defining what is your competitive advantage and can you come up with a model that meets your needs. For me selling physical product was a great proving ground, but I eventually learned that profiting from information was a preferable model if I wanted to meet my aforementioned business goals.

I’ll leave it in your hands to decide whether physical commerce is the way to go for your situation.

4. Sponsorship advertising on a content site

Once my card game site was successful I began researching how to make money from it. I sold cards initially because I already knew there was a market for that and I had the cards, but I was also aware that if I had an audience I could charge sponsors money to advertise to them.

Thus began my love affair with banner advertising.

Although challenging at times to find sponsors, I was quickly able to bring in several hundred dollars per month in advertising revenue by directly approaching online companies who I considered good targets for my readership. I emailed them and asked if they would like to pay a monthly fee to place a banner on my site. Most said no, but some said yes and eventually I had a couple of loyal sponsors.

Banner income would prove very reliable over time as long as I continued to do whatever I did to maintain and build a readership. This has continued today, where several sponsors pay a fee to advertise their products and services to you, the reader of this website.

Banner advertising, when set up using a system like I presently use, can be very hands off – in fact for me it’s entirely passive – assuming there is an audience that the sponsors benefit from advertising to. It’s difficult to make loads and loads of money just from banners unless you have significant traffic, but it is easy enough to make some money from it and once you do, it generally proves very reliable unless you stop updating your website.

I’d recommend this method to you if you have some kind of content based site or a community site that attracts enough traffic to make it worthwhile for sponsors. The best thing about banners is that they don’t have to replace any other income method you use, you can use this income stream in tandem with others.

5. Sell services you provide personally

At one stage early in my career when my online income wasn’t consistent, I was part of a business grant program run by the Australian government designed to assist entrepreneurs with money to pay for life’s necessities so you can focus on growing your business. The idea is that when your business is successful you will eventually hire people and pay taxes, thus the government reaps a return on the investment.

The grant ran for 12 months and I was under the assumption (incorrectly) that I had to show consistent income growth in order to maintain my qualification for the program. My income at the time always suffered a downturn around Christmas/Summer in Australia. To combat this problem I decided to teach English face-to-face with people in Brisbane to hopefully boost my reportable income.

To advertise my tutoring service I marketed using posters offline and eventually set up a website and marketed on classified sites as well. I charged $15 an hour and eventually had a few Korean clients. This idea eventually ballooned into a full on English school with a real world premises that I managed for eight months before closing down. It turned out to be an experiment that taught me I much preferred online business to bricks and mortar.

My English tutoring days were short lived, but that doesn’t mean selling some kind of service that you personally deliver isn’t still a viable option. The Internet is a fantastic place to market your services for free. Similar to what I talked about in the first three points, you can use online community sites, classified, forums and your own website to market your service.

The downside with this model is that you are still trading hours for dollars, which is a violation of my holy trinity concept. It’s not necessarily the worst option – and many people enjoy the life of a high-paid consultant very much – but it does have the inherent limitation that a service is not replicable unless you personally do it yourself or hire people to do it for you, both activities that take time and/or resources.

If you are good at something and enjoy helping/teaching/working on other people’s projects, selling what you do online is worth considering.

6. Sell services provided by other people

My next big success after my card game site was an online proofreading business. For this business I wanted to focus on selling something that did not require either my own labor or sourcing some kind of physical product.

The business began in very simple fashion. I created the website personally myself and advertised two services – English proofreading and language translation services. I knew how to find contract proofreaders and also had access to an online database of language translators. When a job came through I’d organize a quote, slap on a margin for myself and then return the quote to the client.

Over the years I heavily refined this business. I brought on an assistant, simplified the services, cemented a pricing model and learned what methods of marketing brought in the best type of client. The end result was a full time income for me and barely a few hours of work to maintain it.

This was the first time I found a business that met all my major criteria – except one – I really wasn’t that passionate about the industry. Initially I enjoyed being the entrepreneur, the thrill of making money and automating the business as much as I could, but after a few years my passion wained. I eventually sold the business, earning a nice payday in the process, making this one of my most personally gratifying projects.

Selling a service is a real option for making money online. The challenge is sourcing good people to do the work, learning what specific offer to make to the market, how to differentiate yourself so you earn good margins, how to market what you offer and how to automate the entire process so it becomes a passive income stream.

7. Paid reviews

For a brief period on my blog I invited people to submit their product, service or website for a paid review. This means they pay a fee (for my site it was $250) and I would write an article about whatever they submitted. I would not accept just anything for review, I had to see an angle that made for relevant content for my audience. Nor was a paid review a promise that I would write positively about the subject – I would highlight both good and bad points.

Initially I didn’t mind writing paid reviews as the income was pretty good in terms of how long it would take and how much I earned. I could make as much as $250 an hour, which was great at first, but as my motivation focused more on freedom and less on money, even this became a poor incentive. Plus I never did like that I was told what to write about rather than choosing subjects I enjoyed.

The challenge for you, if this method is relevant to your growth stage, is to create a website where you can command a price for paid reviews that makes it worth your time. Until your traffic is significant, charging more than $50 for a review is not realistic, so you need to build your website asset first.

8. Affiliate marketing

As my blog audience grew I began to test a method of making money I was very interested in – affiliate marketing. My first test proved positive, though initially I was disappointed that of my readership of 500 or so people (at the time), I could only sell one or two products, making $20 commission each. It wasn’t retirement money, but it was a start.

Affiliate income has gone on to become my second highest source of income in recent years, thanks in part to the increase in my audience reach. By combining my blog and email newsletter I can reach thousands of people with just one piece of content. By testing different products and recommending things I personally use myself, I’ve been able to earn as much as $50,000 in commissions selling just one product.

Affiliate marketing is possibly the single best way to make a living online because it is so hands off, can be automated easily enough and can deliver some incredible profit margins. It’s especially good when you can use affiliate marketing to recommend things in areas you are personally interested in – for example you can make money simply writing a review of a book you really wanted to read anyway and you get paid for doing what you love.

The challenge for you is figuring out what market(s) to enter, building an audience and maintaining relationships with your readers so they trust what you tell them. If you know something that other people want to know and you are prepared to share that information, you could be looking at a fairly lucrative affiliate opportunity.

9. Sell your own information products

The single most profitable income stream I have ever developed is selling my own information products. If you are a long time follower of my work you know I have created courses on how to make money with blogs and membership sites. I also have several reports, an ebook and new products on the way.

The profit margins on information products is significant, especially as you can earn money for content you created years ago. Technology makes selling information online relatively easy to automate, once you get through the learning curve. If you focus on areas you are passionate about you can build expertise and leverage that trust and credibility to make sales of your products. Best of all, all of this can happen while you sleep, once you have built the machine to do it for you.

I personally enjoy teaching, so creating my products like Blog Mastermind though hard work, was an enjoyable process. Once the course was created I continued to sell it year after year to people new to the industry who want to learn how to make money with blogs.

Like with affiliate marketing, your potential to succeed selling information products rests on your ability to identify market needs, tap into audiences looking for this information and then give them what they want. There are plenty of subtleties and things to learn about, but thankfully there is plenty of guidance out there too. Digging into the archives of this blog you are reading now and downloading my free reports – The Blog Profits Blueprint and Membership Site Masterplan are fantastic starting points if you want more help.

10. High end private coaching

I’ll end this article with something I only recently did – offer high end coaching to a select group of clients who had to apply to work with me. My program cost between $5,000 and $10,000 and I turned away more people than I accepted. This was deliberate as I knew working one-on-one with people is not something I can do with many people or I will use up all my time. However I was keen to help certain people who were in the right position so I could learn more about the challenges they face.

Private coaching, like consulting, is another situation where you trade time for dollars, but in terms of your hourly pay rate it is hard to find a higher paying “job”. Of course you don’t have to start off charging thousands of dollars. Depending on your expertise and what kind of outcome you help people achieve, will determine how much you can charge. Offering coaching for $100 per session is not out of reach for most people, and that’s not a bad starting rate if you are looking to build up your experience through helping others closely.

Again the Internet is by far the easiest and most affordable tool to attract coaching clients. In many cases you can add private coaching to many of the other methods I listed above, including selling info products you create, affiliate products, sponsorship banners and physical products.

Combine What Works For You

In my case progressing through these various methods, figuring out what I actually want from a business and then combining different methods to maximize my income and personal satisfaction has worked the best.

I recommend you follow a similar path to build your own business. Figure out what you like using the options above and other resources online, begin testing to see what works and learn more about what you enjoy, and keep at it until you find what “floats your boat” and is incredibly profitable too.

Making money online with very little investing

Can You Make Money Online Without Spending Money?

When you’re just getting started online (or sometimes when you’ve already spent all of the money you had available), you start looking for ways to launch your online business for free, and wondering if that’s even a real possibility.

The answer is yes!

You can definitely launch and grow an entire Internet-based business without having to spend a single penny for any tools

Choose a No Cost Business Model

You can make money without spending money by promoting products and services. Affiliate marketing allows you to earn money several different ways. Most people are familiar with the more well-known affiliate sites like Amazon, ClickBank and Commission Junction.

But there are some profitable sites that you might not be aware of yet. You can look for PLR affiliate programs. This is where you promote content packs for other marketers.

You can find them by doing an Internet search for PLR sites and see if they have an affiliate program. You can also become a WordPress theme affiliate. StudioPress creates WordPress themes.

If you’re part of their affiliate program, you can promote them. If someone buys a theme through your link, you get a percentage of that sale. You’re not just limited to digital products - you can also promote tangible items.

You’ll find many of these online. But you can also find them offline. Any store that you can physically walk into could possibly have an affiliate program. Walmart has one!

What they pay their affiliates depends on the product category that you promote. Zappos also has an affiliate program. You can promote anything from clothing to home goods.

Sears has an affiliate program, too - but they’re choosy about who they allow to promote. You have to have a certain amount of page views each month for your site before they’ll consider letting you sign up.

Here’s a tip for you if you do decide to promote for a store that has an affiliate program - use contextual links in the body of your blog posts. Don’t just use the banners provided by the stores.

Some people think they’re ads and they don’t click on them so they don’t convert as well as text link recommendations – but test it for your audience to make sure. If you use pictures of the product on your site, make sure the picture is an affiliate link for you.

Many site visitors click on pictures and you don’t want to miss out on that commission. Besides affiliate marketing, you can make money online through ghostwriting.

You can ghostwrite for business clients, for other marketers and for other bloggers. You can write articles, reports and text for web pages. Many of these people who need this kind of work done started out online the same way you will.

When they first started, they looked for ways to earn without having to spend money. But now that their business has grown, they have a lot of need for product output without having a lot of time to keep up with the demand of people who want to learn from them.

So they hire ghostwriters. You can help by offering your services to free up time for them. You can write everything from a blog post to a book for a marketer. You’ll be earning money while you’re growing your own business until one day, it will be you who has the need to hire a ghostwriter.

When you ghostwrite, you’re working on products that someone else created through their expertise. You can do the same. You can create products that are your own and actively promote those items.

What you can create will depend on what niche you enjoy, what you have knowledge about or what you learn about. If you’re into lawn and gardening, you could create a report on how to deal with the most common pest problems associated with lawn and gardening.

Anything that successful marketers create, you can create, too. If they’re creating eBooks, you can do the same. It’s wise to study what the competition is doing to see how they’re making their money.

Everyone has something that they’re good at. For some, that’s helping other people make life changes. You may be the type of person who instinctively knows how to guide people to help them see the direction they really want to go in life.

You could get into coaching people. The type of coaching you can do will depend on whatever it is that you’re good at. If you’re good at knowing how to handle affiliate marketing, then you could turn around and sell your services as a coach in that area.

If knowing how to get a lot of site traffic is your area of expertise, then you can do that. Whatever skills you have that help you meet goals in your life, you can bet that someone else may be able to benefit from your insight - and they’d be willing to pay for your knowledge.

You could become a coach based on your expertise in an area that’s a hobby of yours. If you’re good at training dogs, you can coach others on how to do that. Think about all of the skills that you have in your life that you can use to make money.

You probably have more skills that others can use than you may think. Another route that you can go to earn money online without spending money is to become a virtual assistant.

As a virtual assistant, you can earn by leveraging skills that you probably already have. Though many people hire a virtual assistant for help in their personal lives, others hire one to handle various tasks associated with running a business.

They use a VA to answer their email and handle running their social media sites. Sometimes they might want to hire a VA to do the research involved with a certain project.

You could be hired to perform one big task or several smaller ones. A virtual assistant keeps others organized and accomplishes what has to be done. Many virtual assistants got their start simply because they put the skills that they had in marketing to good use.

Squidoo is a platform that you can use to make money. You can create a lens or several of them and have ads on the site that will earn you a percentage of any clickthrough commissions.

You can also put affiliate text links within your lens that can be used to promote products. The products that you can promote can be Amazon products or products from affiliate sites - as long as they’re not spammy.

You can set up a lens and have a link in it to a place that will let readers opt-in to receive information from you. One of the big helps with Squidoo is that you can use it to link back to any of the money-making sites that you have.

Because Squidoo does well in ranking with search engines, you’ll be able to use that leverage to help you earn money. They’re picky about rules now, so make sure you abide by their terms of service.

Make the Most of Free Tools Available to You

MailChimp allows you to build your own email list for free. You can have up to two thousand subscribers on your list and you can email them throughout the month with information about your business.

When you sign up for an account with MailChimp, you get to create a mailing list. After you do that, take the sign up code and add it to your widgets section in WordPress or Blogger. 

Having an email list filled with subscribers is important for the success of your online business because a list can help you grow your customer base. When you’re first starting your list, you should email your subscribers with useful tools and information.

MailChimp will even let you split test your emails. You can use the A/B testing to determine important things like what time of day is best for sending, which subject lines convert best, and what type of campaigns are the most productive.

By tweaking one thing at a time, you’ll learn what types of content your audience responds to. You’ll want to make sure that you have good keywords in everything that you write because keywords help your potential customers be able to find you online.

It’s important to use short tail and long tail keywords. You don’t have to rely on your own expertise to be able to figure out which words to use. You can get help from a keyword tool - and there are some good free ones.

Ubersuggest.org is one of them. You simply type your word into the query box and you’ll get a list of keywords broken down by some random suggestions the site pulled from the alphabetical list and the rest will be listed under the alphabetical letter.

For example, if you type in gardening, you might get “gardening tips” at the top, but if you scroll down to the “t” section, you’ll see not only “gardening tips” but “gardening tool set”.  If you click on “gardening tool set” the keywords are broken down even more.

The Google Keyword Planner will allow you to see the volume of people searching for certain keywords. But it will also let you know what kind of competition you’ll be facing by choosing certain keywords.

For example, if you choose to use “gardening,” you’ll see the monthly searches and you’ll see that the competition for that word is fairly high.  But if you add the word “organic” to make it “organic gardening,” then you’ll see that the competition is lower.

The reason that using a keyword tool is important is because you’ll be able to see what kind of website traffic is estimated for those keywords and you can choose the ones that will bring visitors to your site.

Graphics are an important part of an online business owner’s arsenal. The right graphics can help you promote your product or services and make you look like a professional.

There are plenty of resources to help you grab professional graphics for free. SmashingMagazine offers a freebies section. This section frequently features graphics like icons, social media buttons, and vectors.

You’ll be able to use many of these freebies in both personal and commercial projects - including services you offer or products you create. But you’ll have to read the guidelines carefully because there are a few icon sets that have restrictions.

The site iStockPhotos.com has a section of their website that offers free weekly photos. You can download the photos and use them however you’d like in your own projects.

But photos aren’t all you can download for free. There are also free audio clips, free video clips, and free illustrations. FreeDigitialPhotos.net has plenty of beautiful images available.

You can use these images for free, provided you credit the photographer. If you can’t credit the creator, then you can purchase the image for a few dollars and use it freely.

Next, you want to make sure that you have a blog for whatever business you have. Many businesses use free blogging sites when they’re first starting out so that they can save on the cost. 

Which blog service you choose should depend on how you plan to use it. If you plan to do affiliate marketing, don’t use WordPress.com. Their terms of service prevent you from including affiliate links in your posts. You’re also not allowed to sell any type of product using a blog from WordPress.com.

Blogger is a better choice if you’re interested in affiliate marketing. Many people have successfully used Blogger to earn money through affiliate programs. You’re even allowed to include ads on your Blogger site through AdSense.

If you’re looking to have a shopping cart on your blog, then you should try Weebly instead of Blogger. Weebly has its own blog structure and comes with a shopping cart option.

Using a free Weebly account, you can sell up to ten products. These can be digital or tangible products or a mix of both. If your site grows beyond ten products, you can always upgrade your account later.

Promote Your Products and Services for FREE on the ‘Net

Thanks to social media, advertising has gotten easier than ever. Social media can allow you to connect with customers in other countries that never would have heard of your business otherwise.

There are several popular social media sites that you can use to promote your online business. Facebook is one of the most popular social media networking sites.

For your online business, you should set up a fan page. When a Facebook user likes your fan page, they’ll get updates from you in their feed. You can also use it to interact with your customers and build a fan base.

You are allowed to have a targeted domain on Facebook. Instead of having a random URL, you can have one that’s specific for your business. If you sold chocolates, you could have that in your URL by having something like Facebook.com/JanesChocolates.

Twitter is a social media service that lets you share updates in 140 characters or less. These updates are called tweets. You can embed media like videos and photos in your tweets.

Providing a steady mix of content will keep your followers interested in what you have to say. But don’t constantly use it to get into someone’s face with a BUY NOW type of tweet. Interact, but don’t be pushy.

YouTube is a social media site that’s centered around videos. Users can post videos, comment on other users’ videos, and create playlists. This may surprise you, but YouTube is a popular search engine.

Many visitors go to YouTube and type in a keyword like “dog training.” If you have a video on dog training that has a good description, your video might appear in the search results.

You can use YouTube to drive traffic to your website or you can use it to promote your services. Again, make sure you follow their rules or you might find your video account shut down.

The social network site Pinterest is an easy way to share pictures. Users ‘pin’ images to various boards. This allows users to find their favorite products or website again.

It’s a great social networking opportunity - especially if you’re in a field that relies heavily upon design such as an artist or web designer.  Infographics go over well here, and users often Share pins, helping your posts go viral.

Don’t forget to join Google Plus. This is the social media network that the search engine, Google created. Google Plus allows you to add users in circles. These circles allow you to choose which of your followers see your status.

You could have a circle for family and one for marketing. Your status about your cat’s antics could be restricted to family while your blog post about a new product could be viewable only to your marketing followers.

Prep Yourself to Level Up By Investing in Your Business

While all of the free tools that are available can be a big help when you’re first starting out, many of them do have limitations and you certainly don’t want to limit your earning potential.

If you start out using MailChimp, eventually, as your business grows, you’re going to outgrow the amount of subscribers you can have on there. So you’ll need to switch to another autoresponder and you’re going to want to pay to get a good one.

Aweber is an autoresponder that - while it’s a paid one - is still pretty inexpensive, and you get a lot of features with them. You get customizable templates for crafting email or to use on your website.

But you also get email tracking with the use of their analytics program. This lets you see what’s happening to the email you send out. You’ll get follow up tools and tools that allow you to specifically target subscribers with information that’s relevant to them.

After you can afford it, you’ll want to invest in paid keyword tools because you’ll be able to access more information that will help you draw in more traffic and build a bigger customer base.

Market Samurai is one of the paid keyword tools that’s good. Among the features that it offers is the ability to identify the best places to promote your website. It also teaches users how to monetize a website.

With keyword use, it’s one of the best programs you can buy. It shows users how valuable a keyword is - both through organic use as well as with paying venues. There are many paid tools that each deliver valuable keyword insight.

You can use graphics on your minisites for different tasks - such as to help you sell a product or to get someone to subscribe to a list. These graphics are used to get the customer to take a specific action.

For example, like a big, red sign up arrow with a Buy Now button. You can start out free and then upgrade to paid graphics using a professional site designer. Your lowest paid graphics might come from Fiverr, but then as you make more money, you’ll be able to invest with a professional designer who has complete packages.

When you want to put money into your business, you’ll want to look at paid traffic, too. This is traffic that comes to your sites through the use of means you paid for.

Google AdWords is an example of using paid traffic. Paid marketing campaigns are a way of advertising your business. You can use the pay-per-click method, or by text or by view, but it’ll depend on the campaign that you choose.

Facebook, while it’s a free social networking site, also has paid ads. So you might post to your Fan Page for free, you also have the ability to “Boost” that post using a paid advertisement.

Starting out on a shoestring budget (or no budget at all) is nothing to be ashamed of. Many people have done it and gone on to create thriving Internet-based businesses – and you can, too!