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[S929]Starting A Small Business Online

by Oyvind Hennum-, Oyv

You get flooded with information and advertising about how easy it is to start a business online all over the place.

And the market is big. According to a recent Harris poll, 72% of American households are thinking about starting a home-based business.

That means that the ones who are selling systems, programs and information on how to set up a home based business have many potential customers. And they make money.

It has been said that during the gold rush the most money was made by selling picks and shovels to the gold miners and not from the gold mining itself. Looking at the numbers of the poll and seeing all the advertising that is made for work at home opportunities it is easy to get the same feeling with the internet.

If you are looking for a way to start up your own online business, you will need to learn to discern what is worth paying attention to and what to skip.

There are many opportunities that promise you 10.000 dollars or more pr. month with no effort. The more fantastic an opportunity sounds, the more you should be alarmed. It might be that the ones who are selling the system are making 10.000 a month or more by selling the system, but that does not give any guarantee that it will work for you.

An important thing to keep in mind is that if the system or program you are looking at requires you to sell the system to other opportunity seekers you should think more then twice unless you are an internet marketing professional.

There reason for this is that even if the market is huge, the competition is fierce. The marketplace for selling income generating systems is dominated by big players and you as a newcomer stand small chances in this competition.

However, there are other fully legitimate and realistic income opportunities on the internet where you can succeed.

If you find a niche where you have knowledge or interest and you are willing to put in some effort to learn how to get your online business going there is a great possibility that you can succeed. But here the effort part is essential. Very few of the people who are successful managed that in a short time with little effort.

The most important is to find an area where you have interest and can easily involve yourself. That will make the learning faster and more fun. If you are starting out your online venture with the only aim to make big profits very fast, you might end up disappointed.

Choosing the right niche and finding out how to profit from it requires research and preparation. The basics of this can be done without having to purchase any tools in the start, but as soon as you want to go more advanced you will need to pay. This research will reveal what people actually are looking for, and what they are willing to buy.
This is an essential first step in starting out a business online.

If all of the information you get feels like an overload, then choose one source of information at the time and focus on that.

In this article we have only scratched the surface of how to build a business and how you can succeed online. If you like to go deeper into the matter I suggest you to seek out more advice and information. As mentioned before, there are many good sources of free information on how to start a business online. Read all the articles and free ebooks you can get, and then make up your mind on what program to choose.

When his internet-savvy nephew suggested promoting his small business on the Internet, Robert designed a simple but attractive five-page small business web site. He added meta-tags and keywords, and waited for the search engines.

Robert wonders, "What now?"

Robert's experience is common among small businesses getting started on the Internet. He has just faced the first big lesson for a small business web site: the web site is not enough. Unlike the weekly advertisement Robert places in the local paper, he needs to promote the web site itself. In a sense, he needs to advertise the advertisement.

What Robert doesn't realize is that he already has the most valuable asset a small business can leverage online -- knowledge and experience. Anyone who runs a small business off-line is an expert on something that other people would like to know about. Writing articles can turn that knowledge into targeted traffic. Article writing is the ideal free method for a small business to promote itself on the Internet.

Every small business has expertise it can share in 500-1,000 word bites. A landscaper could write about the uses for different kinds of turf grass. A window installer can describe new types of energy-efficient windows. A home cleaning service can provide cleaning tips.

Customers ask Robert five questions repeatedly. He can easily write five simple articles to answer them. Then, he just needs to add a "resource box" which advertises and links to his web site.

Robert can also include a few of his web site's keywords in each article, and, if possible, in his resource box. Robert's business depends on local customers. Including his city's name in anecdotes within the articles, or in the resource box, can help his articles to appear in local searches for that city.

Robert would start by uploading his article to a new web page. This gives visitors more to read -- and starts to establish Robert as an expert. More importantly, the article becomes "spider bait" for the content-loving search engines to find and index.

He could stop there, but his new article gives him a more valuable opportunity to promote his site.

Next, Robert can offer his article to other web sites. Most article directories accept submissions of articles. They offer those articles for others to use in newsletters or on web sites. A quick search for "article directory" will yield a sizable list of sites that accept article submissions.

Prepared, with a simple text file ready to copy and paste, it takes just minutes to submit an article to an article directory site. Once posted, the article provides a link to Robert's site. Other webmasters may reprint his article, also linking to his site.

Article marketing is viral, multiplying the links -- and visitors -- to the author's site each time an article is republished. Just one popular article can attract a growing number of information-hungry visitors as the article spreads across the Internet.

Many article directories also include new articles in RSS feeds and e-mail announcements to their lists. Robert doesn't even need his own e-mail list or feed to advertise his web site to readers of his article.

Finally, if Robert has more time, he can search for "ezine directories" to find newsletters that accept articles and offer his article directly to them. If he is willing to spend some money, he could use article submission services.

Over time, the growing number of links to a web site can improve its "link popularity" and Page Rank. As the site rises in the search engine rankings, it attracts even more visitors.

Articles spread those all-important links across the Internet without the tedious process of sending out link exchange requests (often declined or ignored). Better still, webmasters who reprint articles rarely ask for reciprocal links back to their own sites.

The benefit of writing an article builds over time, yet articles require no ongoing maintenance once they are written and submitted. Other options like newsletters, blogs, and forums can demand more upkeep than a small business can afford.

Best of all, articles can remain up on web sites indefinitely, driving free traffic immediately -- and long-term. Most other kinds of advertising stay posted only as long as they are paid for. An article's "views," "reprints," and "click-throughs" can increase -- without increasing advertising costs.

Writing articles is a powerful way to leverage a small business' expertise, transforming it into traffic. The currency of the Internet, information, makes advertising a small business web site affordable. Promoting with articles can jump-start the online presence of a small business and continue to market it for a long time to come.

(c) 2007 Wendy Maki
May be reprinted in email newsletters and on web sites. Must be unedited and include the resource box. All other rights reserved.

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Both Oyvind Hennum- & Wendy Maki are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

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