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The final secret to wealth

2008-03-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

The Secret to Wealth:

Duplicate your Success

Final, but the most important lesson for the entrepreneurs!
What if your business fails? Its sickening feeling when your marketing strategy
fails. You start feeling that you will never be successful any more. If you were
dependent only on one business, your family gets stressed, as you start making
losses. At this point, many people feel like quitting.

Twice I went through such situations in the short period of my 15 years
business life. I had almost touched the edge of my business life! If I had quitted, I
would have not written this course for you. It is as simple as that.

Swami Vivekananda said, Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life
think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every
part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is
the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others
are mere talking machines.

You may say it is easy to advice. The fact you must accept is, unless one
overcomes a problem, he / she will have no guts to advice others. The world is
small after all. I will not lie to you for the measly money I make. The same is the
case with Swami Vivekananda.

I remember reading this phrase in some book, An entrepreneur will not give up
on a business until his creditors come and take everything he owns. And even
then he might try to hide from them and keep things going from his friends
basement.

I owe my success to my wife, who morally (not monetarily!) supported me
during my failure days. When you are down, resort to someone who can morally
support you (and not distract you from your path), be it your Dad, Mom, Spouse or
Friend.

What if you succeed in your first online business?
You know how to automate your business, Right? Automate your present
business and relax, is it? NO!

Once your business starts rolling, invest some more money and automate your
business (if you are selling digital products, you can completely automate). Take
up a new idea and start all over again. Repeat the whole process again and make
the second venture successful (this time you can do it faster as you are already
experienced!). And move on to the 3rd business and so on. This is the secret to
wealth! <- Last secret of the course! . Please read this course once again. I am sure that, if you apply the ideas
systematically, follow the cost effective methods (initially), put in your efforts and
time, you can certainly become wealthy.

Believe me this much information is sufficient for you to start your
internet business. If you are thinking of getting more information and knowledge
before you start your business, then, I am sorry to say, you are a fool like what I
was. I spent most of my time and money only in learning.

Lesson 13: Monitoring and Tracking

2008-03-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

Lesson 13: Monitoring and Tracking
Lesson 13:
Monitoring
If most of the visitors who come to your site leave without purchase, there is
some problem with your website. The problem may be with the sales copy or the
order page or something else may be confusing your visitors.

Understanding what your visitors do on your site is the most crucial part
in online marketing. If you know from which place they enter your site (landing
page), which page they move to and at which page they exit your website, you can
easily identify the problem.

Once you identify the problem just by correcting one small problem, you can
double or triple the sale for the same number of visitors. On many occasions even
by making a small change in the heading, you can drastically increase the sales
figures.

Now you may wonder how to know all these details. For this single reason I
insist that you must learn the basics of website (understanding html files and
uploading / downloading the files from your website using ftp program). Most of the
website hosting companies provides you the statistics. The way they provide
depends on their server and the software they use. Remember to ask them all
these details before you host your website.

The hosting company must provide you access to the traffic logs of your site.
They are normally in the form of a text file that can be downloaded to your hard
disk. From this data, you will be able to know from where your visitors come from
(the country, the search engine, the website link, etc.), the number of visitors per
month, week, day or hour.

The following are the most important of all the statistics you get:
. The total number of visitors to your site
. The total number of unique visitors and

. The total number of pages viewed
If you have the number of page views same as the total number of visitors, it
means that all your visitor enter your website and just leave without taking any
action. It is dangerous to your business. Those who visited your website may
not return again, as they did not like or understand your landing page. You have
to drastically improve on your landing page.

If the unique number of visitors is more than the total number of visitors and it
is increasing day-by-day, it means that you are successfully bringing new
visitors every day.

If the number of page views is more than the total number of visitors, it is a
good sign. Your visitors are browsing through other pages of your website.
Still you need the check and improve on the conversion rate i.e. the numbers of
visitors per sale (the percentage is = no. of sales x 100 / no. of visitors).

Hope you understood how to analyze your website statistics and its
importance. Your target is to increase the number of unique visitors, total
number of visitors, total number of page views and ultimately the conversion
rate.

You will be able to improve your results by changing / adjusting your
advertisement campaign to focus a specific country or the time slot and by focus
more on the search engines that get you good number of visitors. And you can
improve the results by testing different landing pages and comparing the statistics.

Though you can analyze all the information from the log file, it will consume lots
of your time when you start getting more visitors per day. So you must find a
hosting company that will provide you complete (or at least the important) statistics
on the screen itself and if required you should be able to export to a file or to print.

If you find it difficult to understand or to analyze the statistics from your log file,
there are many software programs available to make your job easy.

Tracking
Tracking your sales and keeping track of the sales statistics is another vital for
your business. You need to apply your innovative ideas to track your sales with all
the statistics you get from your website (i.e. without using any third-party software
programs).

For example, stop all your advertisements and observe the statistics. Start one
ad campaign at a time and check the statistics every time. If you are using Google
Adwords, you will get reports from Google about the number of clicks, etc.
Compare it with the statistics you got from your website. With this much
information, you will be able to find out which type of marketing gives you good
conversion rate.

If you are using tracking software to run your own affiliate program, you will get
most of your job done automatically by the software.

If you are promoting affiliate products (reselling other companys products), you
will get the statistics like how many people you have sent, the conversion rate, etc.
You may also use this information (in addition to your own web logs) to analyze
your website.

Email Marketing Techniques

2008-03-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

Lesson 12: Email Marketing Techniques
Lesson 12:

It is a great method of marketing because, it costs you (almost) nothing to send
emails and you can contact your prospects or customers instantly when you need
to promote something. The return on investment when you market through email is
always higher as compared to any other kind of marketing if you promote to right
people.

It is very important to know that you are not supposed to send unsolicited
emails (spamming). By spamming you may not get any sale; on the contrary you
will end-up receiving flames and in addition you might have to face legal disputes.
Off-late people are taking up spam issues very seriously.

There are three aspects involved in email marketing. They are:
. Building the opt-in email list
. Keeping the subscribers (for longer period of time)
. Promoting right products to right subscribers at right time

As we mentioned earlier, you can promote your products through email with
or without your own website. However, please note that building your list is much
easier from a website. If you have your own website you would be promoting it
using various methods and attracting many visitors per day. If your website has
good contents, people prefer visiting again and they would prefer subscribing to
you. Without a website you need to advertise online and offline to get subscribers.

Maintaining the existing list (keeping the subscribers) is the most difficult task
as compared to getting new subscribers. In other words, if you give more than
what they expect, they will be more than happy to remain in your list. And that
depends on what you promised them when you got their email address in the list.

For example, if your website (or your advertisement) promotes a book on
human resources, it is obvious that people subscribing to your list are interested
in the subject. If you promote them an e-book related to electrical engineering,
you will find them unsubscribing instantly.

There are exemptions, for example, during Christmas season you offer them
some free information or you send them a greetings email and simultaneously
promote a product related to the festival, it is more likely that you will end-up
earning money than losing subscribers.

It is good idea to publish your own newsletter (ezine), so that you have a
reason to contact your subscribers at regular intervals. If you provide useful /
valuable information through your newsletter, they would prefer to remain as your
subscriber forever.

To take advantage of the full power of Email Marketing, you need to subscribe
to a good auto-responder service or you must have your own email management
software (with auto-responder).

Lesson 11: Search Engines

2008-03-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

Lesson 11:

To take advantage of search engines, you need to understand how they
function. First thing you need to understand is that a web directory and a search
engine are different.

To get listed in a web directory, you need go to the website and enter your
details under appropriate categories. A search engine will automatically search the
web and if you are eligible, your website will automatically be indexed.
Alternatively you may enter your information at an appropriate URL, the search
engine will visit your website and based on the predefined criteria, your website
will appear on top or at the end of the listing.

It is quite possible that if you are listed in a web directory and if they (directory)
have optimized their pages properly, when someone searches at a search engine,
your name could appear in the search results - possibly on top.

A search engine's main job is to provide results that match exactly what a user
searches for. If they present a result that does not satisfy the user (and if it repeats
every time), it is almost certain that the user is not going to use that search engine
again.

Search engines use software robots called spiders to collect information on
the internet and to store them in advance (before a search is done). This process
is called crawling. The data collected by the robots from internet is then analyzed
to find the exactness of the data and decide the relevance of the sites.

Every search engine has its own formula in doing this process. In general the
factors like, domain name, URL of the webpage, title of the page, keywords, font
size & colour of the title (bigger the better), repetition of certain words, contents of
the page, number of inward and outward links at your site (known as link
popularity), contents of those linked sites, etc. are considered by almost all the
search engines.

Earlier the search engines used to check something called Meta Tags as the
main criterion in sorting the websites. But since the webmaster took advantage of
the search engines to attract visitors by (all means) manipulating the Meta tags,
search engines have tightened their criteria to decide the relevance.

In other words, search engines have become more intelligent than the website
owners and you cannot manipulate your website to rank high.

Before you could submit your website to the search engines, you need to do a
lot of home work. The following are the most required aspects for success with
search engines:

Website URL: Your website name (URL) should preferably contain your
keywords in it. The domain name of a website selling Antique Furniture having
shop and target audience in India may preferably be registered as
www.AntiqueFurnitureIndia.com. If you have a page that talks about exports of
antique furniture, then you can store the information in a file exports.htm. So now
your URL will be www.AntiqueFurnitureIndia.com/exports.htm.

Meta Tags: Though many search engines do not use meta tags anymore,
some still do. So it is still a good idea to use them. Meta Tags are placed between
the tags <head> and </head> in your html file. A basic Meta Tag consists of two
parts. They are:

Keywords: This is a list of keywords that are relevant to your site's content and
should also be around 100 to 150 characters. Each keyword or phrase should be
separated by a comma. For example: <meta name=keywords content=antique,
furniture, indian, exports, exporters, india>

Description: This is a brief statement about your site's content and should be
about 100 - 150 characters in length. For example: <meta name ="description"
content= "Exporters of all types of Indian antique furniture from India">

In case you do not know how to create meta tags, check your CD for FREE
Meta Tag Generator. You just have to create, copy and paste it into your html file.

Page Title: This is very important in getting a good position in search engines.
Provide a brief description, with the keywords that will be most relevant. In the
above-mentioned example, the title could be Exporters of antique furniture from
India.

Content: Needless to say, the content of the webpage should be relevant to
your keywords, description and page title. Keywords must be repeated as many
times as possible. Please remember that you cannot manipulate for the sake of
ranking high on the search engines. The content should flow naturally while using
keywords as many times as possible.

Relevance: When you suggest your URL to the search engines, you need to
select the right category that is appropriate to the purpose and contents of your
site. If not, your website will never be listed in the search results. And there are
possibilities that your site may be banned due to irrelevant content.

This is one important reason why you must never use the automated Search
Engine Submission software to submit your URL to 100s of search engines at a
time. You need to personally submit to search engines, if you want to rank high.

Link Popularity: In the last chapter we discussed about getting links from
other websites. This is one of the factors that are used to weigh your website. The
number of websites you are linking to or linking from is counted and the quality of
the websites is checked (i.e. whether or not the websites linked are related to your
business / content and their reputation in the field).

For example if your website is linked from about 100 websites that are related
to your business / information at your website. And your competitor is linked from
about 150 websites, out of which, only of 50 are related to their business. Then
you rank on top of your competitor, as far as this benchmark is concerned.

If you want to know how many websites (and who) are linking to your website,
search in Google for link:www.yourwebsite.com. This will show you the complete
list of websites that are linked to your website.

In a nutshell: If you are selling a book on Human Resources and you want
your site to be displayed on top when someone searches human resources, you
must preferably have most or all of the following: A domain name something like
www.humanresourcesguide.com, page title like Ultimate Guide for Human
Resources Managers, has keywords like human, resources, hotel, industry,
employees, insurance, font size of the title as bold and prominent as possible, the
words human and resourcesrepeated (at least) in the first few lines of your
webpage, contents that are relevant to the keywords, the sites linking from your
webpage are relevant to your content and your site is linked from as many sites as
possible that are similar to yours.

Patience: This method is not for creating instant traffic. Only PPC ads can
bring you instant traffic. It can sometimes take weeks or even months for a listing
to show up on some of the bigger search engines. Most people run some
automated submission program once and then expect the traffic to flood their
website. It does not work that way.

There is no single technique to rank high on search engines. The above
mentioned tips can help you understand what is happening at Search Engines.

Some search engines will rank you higher based on keywords, others use the
description and some use the title, while others use the text of the web page. By
maximizing each of these areas, you will find better results with search engine
listings.

Remember, this will be an ongoing process for you. All the search-engines
keep changing their formula very fast. As you start working on Search Engine
Optimization, you will get to know the techniques slowly. Frequently visit various

search engines and search for the keywords relevant to your site. See where your
site comes up. Compare the site that comes on top with yours and modify
whatever is required. Keep testing various aspects one-by-one.

Do not forget that the changes will take place only after about a week or a
month. Be patient and be persistent you will be successful.

Google adwords, yahoo,rediff

2008-03-18T00:35:00.000-07:00

Google Adwords
There are lot many reasons why most of the internet marketers prefer Google
Adwords PPC ad engine. You can start or stop an ad campaign almost instantly.
This helps you to test your ads, your website sales copy and the whole marketing
strategy without wasting much of your time.

With Google Adwords, you can restrict your ads for a specific region and
specific time slot. Apart from that, if your ad performs well, i.e. if the click-through-
rate of your ad is high, you will spend less money.

The home page for Google Adwords is http://adwords.google.com/select/. If
you spend some time to browse through this official help page of Google
https://adwords.google.com/select/steps.html, you will easily learn to setup and
run your ad campaigns.

This link (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) is the
keyword tool provided by Google to help you create an extensive list of keywords
for your ad campaign. As you create your keywords, you will also get estimation
about the position of your ad for the particular keyword.

If you want to analyze extensively, login to your Adwords account and then go
to https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox. It will give you a
good estimate as to how much others are paying "per click" for the keywords you
entered. You will be able to see how many clicks you can expect to get per day.
And also you will be able to see how much you can expect to pay "per day" for
every keyword in your list.
Yahoo Search Marketing
Home page: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/
Keyword Selector Tool: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/
Bid Tool: http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

Rediff P4C Classifieds
Home page: http://classifieds.rediff.com/
To place ads: http://pay4clicks.rediff.com/scripts/campcreate_1.phtml

A mind boggling secret about Pay-per-Click
(People sell half of the following information for more than Rs.500 in India, probably
because they are good at marketing!!!)
If you learn (and become an expert in) pay-per-click advertisement programs,
you will understand the cost of various keywords for advertising.

Select a few cost-effective keywords and search for affiliate programs based
on those words. Check the conversion rate of the affiliate website i.e. how many
visitors you need to send to their website to effect a sale. Calculate the expense
involved to send those many visitors to their website and the amount that you will
earn on creating a sale.

For example if you have to pay Rs.5.00 per click for the keyword perspective
drawing, and you join an affiliate program who sells a product related to
perspective drawing. If their conversion rate is about 50 and your commission per
sale is about US $ 10 (or about Rs.450/-). Then you spend Rs.250/- to earn
Rs.450/- (i.e. you create a sale by sending 50 visitors to their website).

If you take pain initially to calculate carefully and to find an affiliate product
that fetches you more than you spend, later you will earn money without pain.

Your own Affiliate Program
This is a widespread method of promoting a website. Please do not confuse
this with what we explained about affiliate marketing in the earlier chapter.
Affiliate marketingis promoting a product of another website (some other vendor)
who hosts the affiliate program and get paid for promoting the product.

To promote your own product, you will run the affiliate program from your
website. You will recruit internet marketers as your affiliates and pay them for
promoting your product. Depending on the type of your product and your
marketing plan, you may pay them for every visitor, subscriber or customer.

To setup affiliate program for your website (to track the sales that are referred
by affiliates), you have three options.

. Install a readymade affiliate tracking software on your site
. Use a third party such as CommissionJunction.com, Clixbank.com and
PayDotCom.com
. Install the program that we provide you free-of-cost

To setup your website to handle good number of affiliates and to handle huge
volume of sale, you may choose one of the first two options. Your investment
would be anything between Rs. 5,000/- to Rs.20,000/- But most of your job will be
done automatically by the software. You may have to just write cheques to your
affiliates at the end of every month, or in some cases payments can also be
automated.

Just to get started with a small setup of affiliate tracking program, you may
choose the third option, which will cost you nothing. But you will need to learn
basics of html and website design, as you cannot depend on someone for simple
tasks to track the sales.

If you are a beginner (and do not have experience with any software) you may
find it difficult to understand how the program works. Our intention is to get your
online business started and make you aware of the various options available for
promoting your site.

Search Engines,Email,PPC

2008-03-18T00:32:00.000-07:00

Search Engines
This is the best among all the methods to bring visitors to your website. The
most attractive factor of search engines is that you need not pay any money to get
traffic.

And also this is the most difficult method to understand and to implement. But if
you can master it, you will be the most successful person in your field.

The people coming from search engines have not accidentally clicked on a
banner or an advertisement link out of curiosity. They actually came to search
engines to find what they want. If you tap them properly, you will save lots money
on advertising costs. After all money saved is money earned, isnt it?

Since there are too many aspects involved in getting good results with Search
Engines, we will discuss in detail in the next chapter.

Email Marketing
Email is again a powerful marketing tool that can be used in conjunction with
your website or even without a website. As it involves many aspects, we will
discuss later in a separate chapter.

Pay-per-Click Advertisements

Among all the paid advertisements, PPC ads are the most effective as you get
complete statistics like click-through rate (i.e. how many clicks are made per 100
impressions) from the host that helps you to improve on your advertisement so
that you can attract more clicks. And you have full control over your expenses as
you can bid on the charges, set maximum cost per click and maximum spending
per day.

Though there are many websites that offer PPC advertisements, there are only
two websites that are widely known among the internet community. Those are
Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing formerly known as Overture. In
addition, if you are targeting Indians you can consider Rediff P4C.

There are two ways you can advertise using PPC advertisements:
. You pay only for the visitors you get (i.e. when someone clicks on your
advertisement). If no one clicks, you dont have to pay.
. You pay per impression. Your ads are shown in the search engines
according to the searches made.

Though PPC advertisements have lots of advantages over any other kind of
advertisement, if you do not properly research before you start your campaign, you
will end-up blowing your money away without any or few results.

To help you learn and research we have provided various links below. Please
visit each link and learn before you seriously get into action.

Please remember that more number of searches is made at Google than any
other search engine. Hence the competition (for advertising) is more on Google
Adwords than that of Yahoo Search Marketing, you need to bid for more at
Google.

Part IV -Promoting your Internet Business

2008-03-18T00:12:00.000-07:00

Part IV - Promoting your Internet Business

Lesson 10: Drive traffic to your website
Lesson 10:

Understanding the chapter: This chapter contains most of the online
marketing techniques that prevail as of now and are listed as per their significance.
The most essential, the most preferred and the method that fetches instant result
is on the top of the list. For example, Search Engines are the most preferred
promotion tool online, but you will not be able to rank on top if you do not have
sufficient number of reciprocal links. So before submitting your Site URL to a
search engine, you must try and get as many reciprocal links as possible.

You may be having the greatest product in the world and your website may be
beautifully designed. But if no one knows where it is, all your efforts and money
have gone to drain. There are many ways of promoting your website and all the
techniques may not work for everyone.

To get optimal result, you need to choose one method at a time and test it
thoroughly. Closely watch each of the methods. Focus more on the methods that
bring in good results and (slow down or) drop the methods that do not fetch the
desired results.

Before getting into promotion of your website, the most important thing you
must do is to have your product and the website completely ready. Be fully
prepared assuming that you are going to get orders on the very first day (though
you might not).

Reciprocal links
After designing and hosting your website, the very first thing you must do is to
create a list of websites that are similar to yours, yet not your competitors. For
example, if your site sells mobile phones, you could include the websites that sell
accessories of mobile phones. Personally visit their websites to analyze and
understand their website. List out the web pages that you would like to link to.

Decide the appropriate pages in your website where you could provide links to
those websites.

Contact the webmasters (or the appropriate persons) of those websites and
inform them that you are interested in linking to their websites and request them to
provide reciprocal links from their website to yours.

If you provide good content in your website (or if they find your website worthy),
they will be more than happy to link to your website. Ultimately they are also going
to gain link popularity by having reciprocal link to your website.

If you want to approach a website that is already very prominent, you may first
link their website from your website and then request them a link to your website.

Link exchange or Banner exchange
This is another way of getting reciprocal links. There are some websites that
provide a platform for various website owners to meet and exchange their links or
banners. These websites are the directories that have a list of people who are
interested in exchanging their links with other websites.

You need to choose the right websites and exchange your link or banner with
theirs.

Participation in Newsgroups
If you are not aware, a newsgroup (or group or discussion forum) is the
meeting place for a group of people having similar interests or in a similar field or
from a particular region.

Usually people meet to exchange their views, to learn from experts in the
specific field, to find a solution to their problem, to help others in solving their
problems, to make new friends or simply to pass time.

If you have experience in your field (i.e. the field related to your product), you
can participate in the forums or groups and help others to solve their problems and
you can provide your contact details including a link to your website. If your site
provides free information related to the problem, you can ask them to visit your
website to solve their problem.

Web directories
Search engines go out in the web and save the data in their servers. Then
when you search for information, the related sites from the database are
displayed. Web directories are different from search engines. Web directories
provide the information that is already stored in their database. Some directories
allow you to directly add your entry and most of them take your details and add it
manually.

Many web directories do not charge to display your information and some
charge a nominal fee. You need to select the web directories with respect to your
market i.e. the target audience.

We personally recommend you to use all the free listings before you start
earning from your internet business.

Classified Ads on the Internet
Some websites display your ads on their website, some display them on their
memberssites and some send out the ads via emails. Few websites provide free
services and others charge. You are advised to study the hosting sites before you
really start spending money on the advertisements.

As we told earlier you must first advertise using free classified ads.

Banner advertisements

These are more or less same as classified ads. Unlike banner exchange
programs, you are charged for displaying the banners. The charges are usually
per thousand impressions.

Lesson 9: Business without a website

2008-03-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

Lesson 9: Business without a website
Lesson 9:

You do not have a website or not planning to have one in the near future (there
is no reason for not having a website!), then you have only two options for
selling your products.

Email Marketing
Email is one of the powerful marketing tools that every marketer prefers.
Whether you have a website or not, you need to use this tool in order to get more
results from your marketing efforts.

As this is one of the methods of promoting your internet business, a chapter is
dedicated to this topic in the next section of this course.

Selling through eBay
There are many auction sites like eBay.com. But eBay is well known to the
internet community around the world and you can trust them since lakhs of people
around the world are selling their products through eBay. They have the highest
number of visitors as compared to other auction sites. Due to these reasons, you
will find it easier to promote your products from eBay as compared to others.

As the potential for internet business is very high in India, eBay has dedicated
an ecommerce website (www.eBay.in) to the Indian market (formerly known as
Bazee.com).

If you want to understand the concept of business at eBay, just compare it with
the trade fair (exhibition). There will be a person or a company who organizes the
whole show and the participants pay an amount to the organizers for displaying
their products.

EBay, at their website, provide a base to the marketers to conduct ecommerce
activities locally as well as internationally. The sellers have to just select an
appropriate category for their product, provide all the details (including picture if

required), provide various options for collecting payment, sell the product and
provide excellent customer support. EBay take care of promotion of the website
and brings in the visitors to their website (where you promote your products).

One of the features of eBay is ratings (feedback comments) of every buyer or
seller. Once a transaction is complete, the buyer leaves a feedback comment
about the seller and the seller writes about the buyer based on their experience.
These comments help us to take the right decision at the time of finalizing a deal.
You can check the ratings of the buyer or seller and then you can decide whether
to deal with the member or not.

Though the basic idea of eBay is auction (and it is known for that), you can
also sell your products without auctioning. To participate in eBay (either buying or
selling), first you need to register yourself and become a member of eBay. It costs
nothing to become a member. And you need not pay anything for buying products
through eBay. However if you want to sell your products at eBay, you have to pay
them a small fee. The fee varies depending on your product. Please check your
CD to know more about joining eBay at free-of-cost.

As of now, eBay.in charges a flat insertion fee ranging from Rs.30 to 200 per
month for selling real estate products or services. There is no insertion fee for
other products. You need to pay eBay.in only when your product is sold. The
charges may be anything from Rs.3.00 onwards, based on the final value of your
product.

The process is very simple and it is very easy to transact. However, before you
can be a successful seller, you need to do some research to understand the
business at eBay very well.

Before you really get into the business, we suggest that you must watch
eBay.in carefully and understand how your competitors have sold and are selling
their products. Watch the products (similar to your products) that are successfully
sold and that are being currently auctioned. You can search the products that are

recently sold by clicking Advanced Search and selecting Completed Listing
only. Study the sellers, buyers, starting price, ending price and whether they are
auctions or Buy It Now listings. This will help you place your product and set its
price correctly.

Another suggestion is to play it safe until you become an expert. While
choosing a buyer, read the ratings carefully and deal with them only if you are
comfortable with them.

Though eBay bring-in visitors to their web site, for your product to be visible to
the searchers, you need to work smart. You must select the right category that
your product belongs to. You must know (or learn) how the visitors would search
your product. In other words, what are the words (keywords) that the visitors may
use to search your product?

Your title must be attractive and should clearly state what your product is. Use
descriptive keywords that clearly convey what you are selling. There is no harm if
your title repeats the category name. It is better to include your item's brand name,
author, artist, or designer. Your title should never mislead the visitor. That is, do
not use irrelevant keywords just for the sake of attracting people to your page.

Write the description as elaborate and specific as possible. Try to mention all of
the following in your description: About your product, the material it is made of,
date of manufacture, the brand / author, the condition of the product (new, used,
etc.), any problem or repair, dimensions, from which country / location, any notable
features or markings and any special background or history.

Additionally, you may try to add a creative approach to the descriptions like:
What you especially like about the item? Who you think it would appeal to and
why? An interesting story about the item (for example, how you acquired it), How
the item might be used?

Be clear about payment methods you accept and about your shipping method
and costs.

Lesson 9: Business without a website

2008-03-18T00:08:00.000-07:00

Lesson 8: Business from your Website
Lesson 8:
Affiliate Marketing
You need not promote someones product and you need not sell anything. You
just have to send people to the website you are affiliated with. Once you become
an affiliate for a company, you will be provided with a special (unique) URL. You
can promote them from your website by displaying their banner or text link from
the content pages or through your emails or newsletters. You need to make
people click on the link provided by Affiliate Company. And your job is over.

The company takes care of selling their products. Even if some visitors do not
buy during their first visit, the company keeps track of them and you get credited
when they buy the product. Usually they track the visitors by placing a small file
called cookie in the visitors computers and reading them when they visit again.

You will get paid for your visitors purchases - as long as the cookie remains in
their computers at the time of purchasing the products.

Though in general, the companies pay per-sale, some companies even pay
per-lead or pay per-click. In pay-per-leadyou are paid for giving a lead to the
company, i.e. when a visitor from your website visits their website and asks for a
quotation or downloads a free demo or registers for a free program, etc. In pay-
per-click you are paid whenever a visitor from your website reaches their website.

Joining an affiliate program (also known as reseller program) is very easy. You
need not pay any money for joining the program (in most cases). Based on your
product or the theme you have chosen, signup as affiliate for one or more
products. While signing-up, read the terms and conditions carefully to checkout the
percentage you get, the minimum money to be accumulated to request the
payment, frequency of payments, etc.

There are many people who earn good amount of money just using this
method alone. But you should know a fact before you lay your hands on this

method of making money. To start earning right away (a handsome income), you
need to have hundreds (or thousands) of visitors coming to your website everyday.
Or if you intend to use email marketing, you need to have thousands of emails in
your list. So this method is the best method of earning money, if you already have
a busy website or a large email list.

If you are just starting your business, you need to promote your website and
build the traffic, whether it is your own product or affiliate product. But your earning
will be more if the product is your own. So the bottom line is, if you are just
starting your business, consider creating and promoting your own product first
and simultaneously promote affiliate products as secondary products.

Google Adsense
Today Google Adsense is one of the hottest subjects that are being
discussed around the world. What is Adsense?

If you had visited Google website and searched for some information you might
have noticed some links on the right-hand side and on top of the page. Those are
called Text Links that are relevant to the information you are searching for. Those
links are the advertisements, a program called Google Adwords. Google charges
the advertisers for those advertisements on per-click basis.

If you are registered with Google for AdSense, they will provide you with some
HTML codes that you will copy and paste it on your website. When someone
opens your website, Google ads appear on your website that is relevant to the
content of your website. And when one of your visitors clicks on any of the
advertisement links, the advertiser pays to Google and Google shares part of that
revenue with you.

At this point you must understand an important factor. All clicks do not fetch
the same money. Some keywords are sold for high price due to competition and
due to the frequency of its searches per day. And some keywords are sold for very

low price, since there is no competition. It is quiet natural that Google will pay you
based on the income they generate.

So it is important to closely watch and study the current trend. If you know the
profitable keywords, you can optimize your website accordingly and generate a
decent income from Adsense.

To register with Google for Adsense you need to have a website that provides
information (onany subject). The website must be completely ready without any
broken links (i.e. the links that take you nowhere). Once your website is completely
ready, only then should you apply to Google. One of their representatives will
personally check your website and then it will be approved or rejected. The whole
process of registration may take a week or two.

In a way Google Adsense is like an affiliate program. You will generate
handsome income, if you have good traffic to your website.

In the past one year alone hundreds (if not thousands) of websites have
mushroomed and variety of products like Secrets of Google Adsense uncovered
are being sold. And people charge for such products anywhere between US $10
and $197. It has become a fashion to create a product and incorporate the
word Google while naming the product.

But the fact is there is no such secret exists that needs to be uncovered.
If you want to make good amount of money with Google Adsense, you need to get
thousands of visitors per day to your web site. If you do not have sufficient visitors
to click on the ads on your webpage, it is obvious that you are not going to
generate any income through Adsense.

Earlier in this course we had discussed in detail about finding a niche product.
The same concept is applicable for finding the profit making keywords. Please
check your CD for some very useful keyword tools.

Visit http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/ to find out the keywords that
were used the most during the last month. To find out how much people are
bidding for a particular keyword use this Keyword Bid Tool:
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

This will give you an idea of the costly and cheaper keywords. There is twist
here, please read carefully. It is obvious that the costly keywords will get you more
money per-click. But costly keywords need not necessarily be your profitable
keyword!!!

At this point you must remember that these keywords are costly, because there
is competition. It means that there are already many websites with content related
to these (costly) keywords. If you are going to build a website with such content,
you will find it difficult to get your website listed on top of search engine results.
This is the place where you need to work really smart.

Lets say the cost of keyword1is 50 cents (half a dollar) and the cost of
keyword2 is 2 dollars ( http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/). If
you analyze and conclude that (because competition is less) you can get more
visitors to your website with keyword1 (and hence more clicks) as compared to
keyword2, you should consider building your website with the cheaper keyword.

If you can get can 400 clicks on keyword1 and just 50 clicks on keyword2,
you will make more money with keyword1. In the above case, your profitable
keyword is keyword1, though it cost less and you will earn less money per-click.
So you have to understand your profitable keywords and build your website with
these keywords to display the ads on your webpage to earn good income.

The first criterion is to understand the profit making keywords. Second is to
generate good traffic to your website. These are the real secrets involved in
making money with Adsense and nothing more. Soon you will learn various
methods to generate traffic to your website.

The Sales Process

2008-03-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Sales Process
Lesson 7: The Sales Process
Lesson 7:

You learnt various methods of making money on the internet in the earlier
chapters of this course. You also learnt that you can do internet business With or
Withouta product to sell and also With or Without a website. Now lets look at it
in depth.

If you have a product to sell, you can sell it from your website or using email
marketing.

1) If you choose to sell from your website, you can make use of the full
power of the internet. As you learnt in the last two chapters you can fully
automate your website and just supervise the process with less or no
effort. Based on the results, either you accelerate the marketing process
or change the method of marketing and fine-tune to make it as profitable
as possible. Then shift your focus on creating a new product and build a
new online business. Initially you need to work really very hard &
smart to create the momentum to get your business take-off and only
then you can relax!(?)

2) You can sell the products using email marketing without a website. Here
you need to combine automation and the conventional methods of
marketing. You have to be prepared to work hard, especially to check
and reply your email messages twice-a-day, on all 7 days of the week.
Your workload will be as much as of a conventional business. So
naturally your growth is limited.

3) If you choose Internet Marketing for Affiliate Marketing and Newsletter,
again you have choice of marketing from website or through email. Pros
and cons are as mentioned above.

4) If you choose to earn from Google AdSense you have no option than
marketing from your website or web log (or Blog).

In a conventional business you get to meet the customers, look at their eyes,
facial impressions, body language and they get chance to look at you, your shop,
brochures, products, etc.

On the internet during the marketing process you are not going to face the
customers like a conventional business. So it is much more difficult for you to sell
your products to a customer online. The only way you will communicate with your
customers is through your Sales Letteron your website or through your email (or
advertisements). So you need to be very careful when you write your Sale Letter
(also known as Web Copy or just Copy).

This section guides you in creating a powerful sales letter. There are numerous
books available on this subject. But in our experience there are no fixed rules for
writing sale letters. A copy that works perfect for our product and our method of
marketing may not bring in expected results for you.

The end result of your sales copy depends on your product, how you brought
your visitors to your website, where you advertised and what you promised to pull
them to your website. There are many other factors that can govern the
effectiveness of your sales letter. The colours, graphics, your dominance over
language, font size and the way you present, all must appeal to your target
audience.

Do you remember what we discussed in 4t hlesson? A sale letter could be short
and sweet in just 1 page or can run as lengthy as 10 pages with lots of
information. Your ultimate aim is to convince your visitors to buy your product. The
fact is that a long copy does work really well as compared to a short copy. If
people are interested in what you write, they will read as much as you can write.

The following are the generalized ideas that you may consider while writing
your copy. Remember: to implement these ideas you must first understand your
target audience and the benefits that your product will give your target
audience.

Grab attention: Be it the caption of your sales copy at your website, subject
line of your email or heading of your advertisement, the first thing you must do is to
grab the attention of your prospective customer. The intention is to make them
read further. Be creative and form the words that will grab attention. People use
certain words known as trigger words like secret, tips, hot, discover, insider, free,
warning, etc. Try to make it memorable so that even if they do not get attracted the
first time, they remember your heading and search you later when they need you.

Write according to your audience: Earlier in the products section we told
how to understand your target audience. Now put yourself in your prospects place.
Think about why they will be at your site. Imagine what they will think when they
read your copy. Get inside your visitors minds. You have to trigger their emotion
that is associated with your product. It can be anything, desire, lust, greed, fear,
envy, angry, whatever. Its strong. You can tap into that emotion.

Build relationship: Best way to do this is to talk to your visitors through the
sale letter. Let the message flow naturally, in logical order, as if you are talking to
them personally. Include some story or your experience and make it interesting.

Benefits not the products: From the Heading till the end of the sale letter,
talk about benefits that your product will give. Never mention about your
product till the end of your letter. By the time you talk about your product at the
end of your sale letter, your prospects have already read all the benefits and
advantages with an open mind, without thinking that something is being sold to
them.

Benefits not the features: Repeatedly stress the benefits of your
product/service throughout your sales copy and not about the features of your
product. What is the ultimate benefit that your target audience can expect from
your product / service?

For example, you have a book called How to buy new mobile every year
without spending a rupee. The feature of the book is to save money for your
customers on their monthly bills. The benefit is they can buy new mobile handset
every year without spending a rupee. You know everyone wants to upgrade their
handsets to the latest model.

The offer: Your page should create a desire for your offer and urgency to
grab the offer instantly. Your sale letter should focus on just one action of your
visitor. Your offer could be to sign up for your free list or join your members site or
buy your product. Never give options on your sales page.

Ask for order: You have to ask for the order. Though it is not at the beginning
of your sale letter, you must ask for the order. Offer incentive for ordering
immediately. Show them in step-by-step how to order.

Guarantee: It is natural that any human will feel the pain if he / she has to part
with his / her money, especially when they are not aware of the value of your
product. Though you have listed the benefits of your product, you need to make
them more confident in order to make them pay you. To do so, backup your
product with an extraordinary money-back guarantee. Dont worry, if your
product is good you will not get returns.

Payment: After lots of efforts you succeeded in convincing a person to buy
your product. Now if you do not make it easy for them to pay you, the order is
going to slip away from your hands. You have to provide all the possible methods
to collect the payment.

First and foremost, you must be able to accept credit cards. If not you will lose
more than 50% of your orders. You can open a merchandise account with your
bankers to accept credit cards from your website or you can apply for the same
through agents.

Alternatively you could register with companies like PayPal, PaisaPay or
eGold and ask your customers to pay using credit card through them. One
problem here is, your customer needs to register with those companies before
they pay you. Some people do not have the patience to go through the registration
process, especially if they are not regular buyers on the net.

If yours is a physical (tangible) product, you can take order and ask them to
pay when they receive the product (payment-on-delivery basis). In this case, it is
always better to phone and confirm with them before you dispatch the product.

(In India) you can provide the account number of your multi-city bank account
and ask your customers to deposit cash or cheque in your account. Finally, you
can ask them to post you the cheque or demand draft (and most likely they are not
going to do so - still there is no harm asking!!!) and send the product on receiving
the payment.

Testing: Like any other part of the online business, testing the sales copy is
essential. You will learn more about it when you learn about promoting your
website.

Lesson 6: Design & Host your website

2008-03-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

Design & Host your website
Lesson 6: Design & Host your website
Lesson 6:

In the earlier chapters of this course, you have already learnt the basics of
internet marketing, about how to create your own products, how to draw your
business plan and about designing your website.

Since you know what your website should look like, it is good if you start
creating it right now. If you are a software programmer or know little about
software, then you will find it very easy to directly work on HTML files. If you have
no experience in any software, to save your time and money we have more than
300 readymade web pages for you your CD.

We recommend you to use some wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get)
text editors like MS Word (you need to create a file and save as html) or MS
Publisher or something similar to those and modify the readymade web pages
(templates) to suit your requirements.

Once you are familiar with html files (may be in a week) open your CD for the
legal version of advanced html generator. This software is very powerful and will
help you create html files from scratch or to edit an existing file.

It is available free-of-cost (as of now) on the internet, but is not widely known. If
you go to buy similar software in the market you will end-up paying not less than
Rs. 3,000/- They have a comprehensive web tutorial that covers every aspect of
the software. The author (or owner) is definitely an open-minded, generous
person.

In addition to the readymade web pages, we have provided free online books
to learn advanced techniques of HTML programming, some advanced html tools,
scripts and CGI files that will be useful to you. You are free to use them as you
wish.

Register your domain name
You need to register Domain names (i.e. Website URL) with the companies
called"domain registrars". You can get a list of such companies at
http://www.ICANN.org/. You can register your domain name by paying in advance
for 1 year up to 10 years.

You will find that the companies may charge anywhere between $9 and $30
per year perdomain (.com / .net / .org). Often you will find some companies
offering domain names for as low as $3. Before you take any decision to register
with them check the offer thoroughly. You will be surprised to see the shortfalls.
When you compare the prices, you must compare for 1 year, 2 years as well as for
10 years.

Another important thing to remember is, when you pay and register the
domain, your name should be listed as the owner as well as the technical contact.
You should have the full control of your domain. You should be able to select your
preferred hosting company. No way should you get trapped because of the low
cost. Remember, when you start promoting your website, the domain name is your
biggest asset. You should never give a chance for anyone to claim a stake on it.

There is a trade secret about domain registration. There are thousands of
marketers around the world who invest time, effort and money to promote their
websites to pull the traffic. Later on, some of them change their focus on
something else or for some reason they leave their site active and move to some
other business. Though they stop promoting actively, the auto-marketing systems
they had placed, keeps getting the traffic in.

In such situations, when the registration for such domain names expires, the
owners sometimes forget to renew or they decide to stop it. Even after expiry of
the domains, the efforts they had put-in earlier still bring traffic to the site.

Identify and register such domain names immediately and then either build a
website or just redirect the domain name to your existing website. Simply enjoy the

fruit of others labor, which otherwise would have been wasted. Please
understand that you are not stealing others business. We have seen few such
companies providing this service.

Hosting your website
Hosting is nothing but keeping all your files and placing the domain on a
computer called server. Once your website is hosted on a server, it becomes
available for the world to browse.

You must have heard about UNIX / Linux and Windows NT servers. If you are
not a software programmer, you must be wondering about the operating system
on which to host your website. Actually it does not matter which operating system
you are using at home. You can host your website on any platform i.e. UNIX /
Linux / Windows NT.

Hosting on UNIX / Linux server is cheaper, faster and reliable in the security
point of view, as compared to Windows NT server. However hosting companies
prefer Windows NT server due to availability of support during critical breakdown,
in spite of its heavy cost.

But never get fooled by the Free Hosting. Free hosting has lot many
disadvantages. You will not have your own address like www.YourName.com.
Instead, your web address would be www.FreeHosingCompany.com/YourName.

Once you start your business, you will put lots of efforts to bring-in visitors.
What if the hosting company restricts your traffic or the company closes down? On
the internet, changing the domain name / website address is as good as starting a
new business.

Additionally, the (free) hosting company may display advertisements on your
website. You could lose your customers to your competitors due to the
advertisements on free website that you do not have control over. You could even

lose the income that you could have made from displaying advertisements on your
website.

If you want to grow big in your online business, choose to go for your own
website with paid hosting. We have listed few of such reliable companies on your
CD. You will find them very cost effective and reliable.

Test, test and test
You have planned well, designed a good website and you have hosted it using
a very reliable web hosting company. However, all these can prove to be useless
until your site is actually working, the way you designed it. If you want to create a
successful website, you need to test, test and test again.

Albert Einstein once said, No problem can be solved from the same level
of consciousness that created it. Ask a few of your friends to browse your site
and, if possible, watch them silently as they do this. Remember that if at any stage
you feel like explaining them, then there is some problem. Take note of it and
analyze later.

You will be surprised at the number of mistakes you have committed. Some
times what you wrote might convey altogether a different message to the visitor,
which you cannot even imagine. Such mistakes can be rectified only when a third
person checks it.

Ask them to check colours & size of fonts (readability), graphics, all the links in
the website, contents (and what it means to them), time taken to open the website
(with slowest possible computer and modem), with different operating systems (if
you are using Windows XP, check with Windows 98 and others), with different
browsers (Old and new versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox,
Opera, etc.) and with different display settings (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and
different colour-settings).

Ask them to browse your website as if they read some advertisement and have
come to your website to search that information. And ask them whether they got
what they were looking for.

You need to rectify everything before you actively promote your website. If your
visitors find any mistake in your website, you will loose the credibility. Failure to
ensure website quality might cost you thousands of rupees in terms of wastage of
time & money on website redesigns and lost customers. Testing a website is
certainly a long and tedious task, but it's the most important task of all.

Lesson 5: Automation is the key

2008-03-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

Lesson 5: Automation is the key
Lesson 5:

When you are just starting your online business, you might think that initially
the business is going to be slow, you can handle everything manually and that at a
later stage when you become busy, you can automate your website. This is
absolutely a wrong concept.

Internet business is not like real life business, where you will slowly grow. If you
understand the business, apply the tactics and promote properly, you will start
getting hundreds of visitors, everyday in less than a month. If your website is not
completely automated, 24 hours per day will not be sufficient for you just for
checking and replying the emails, leave alone the marketing part of it
(promoting and expanding your business).

What is automation? To understand that you must know how the business
works on internet (you will learn more about it in the Lessons 7, 8 & 9).

. You will advertise or use other methods to bring visitors to your website
. You will provide all the information at your website
. If you dont have a website, your customers would email to the address
you provided in your ad
. A program will automatically reply them with all the information about your
product
. If they decide, they will place order on your website or via email
. Your website will automatically charge their credit card or they will pay
you via a service like Paypal
. You will get an email when the amount is credited to your account
. And instantly the product is dispatched to your customer, without your
intervention

The whole idea is that you should be able to spend your precious time to
accomplish other important tasks like promoting your business, applying your mind
in your business to find and implement innovative ideas to increase your profits.

Auto-Responders: The programs that perform these actions are called Auto
Responders or Autobots or Infobots. There are basically three types of
programs involved in automation of your business (either website or just email
marketing). They are:
1) Basic Auto-responder : This facility is usually provided by your ISP
(hosting company) as a part of their website hosting services. If your
ISP does not provide such facility or if you do not have a website,
you can have programs to do the job.
Example: You will have multiple email addresses, each for a
purpose (like faq@yourdomain.com, ebook@yourdomain.com, etc.).
If you want to promote an e-book through advertisements, you will
first have your auto-responder setup for the email id
ebook@yourdomain.com, to reply all the incoming messages
instantly with the required information and then you will advertise the
email id ebook@yourdomain.com. Now if someone emails, he /
she will automatically receive the preset message without your
intervention. And you will have all the incoming email addresses
stored for the future follow-ups.
2) Advanced Auto-responder : This is either a web-based program or
a standalone program running on your computer that enables you to
collect & store email addresses of the people who visit your website
(opt-in) or those who email you requesting information. It
automatically sends the email messages as you programmed earlier.
You can program a series of emails at specified intervals well in
advance. Occasionally you may also send messages (any special
offers or announcement) to the stored email addresses.
Example: Usually you will have a special email address to accept
membership to your site or subscription to your newsletter (like
subscribe@yourdomain.com, membership@yourdomain.com, etc.).
You will have a form at your site or in case of email marketing you
will advertise the email address. Those visitors who are willing to

subscribe, enter their name and email address at your site or they
send a blank email to the specific email. Your Autobot will send a
reply to their email address asking them to confirm their willingness
to subscribe. If they confirm within stipulated time (usually 7 days)
their email addresses would be stored, otherwise the program will
remove the email address from the database. Once the email is
stored in the database, the Autobot starts sending messages as you
programmed earlier.
3) Web based form : This is not a program but a simple HTML Form
placed on your website, from where you collect information from
your visitors at your website and on click of a button your website will
email the information to one or more email addresses automatically.
If you plan it properly, you can make it a powerful tool by combining
it with the auto-responders.

Accepting payments online: This is not as difficult or as risky as you may
feel. There are few well established and reputed companies around the world and
very few companies in India who have payment gateway facility for their members.
You can register with any or some of them and they will accept credit cards on
your behalf and remit the money into your account. Usually their charges are
certain percentage of the transaction value and you will not incur any recurring
cost.

Alternatively, you can apply for a merchant account with your local bank or
approach some agents who can do the process and get the registration for you. I
recommend to have your own merchant account when you start growing, because
the company / bank will charge you on monthly basis, regardless of whether you
transact or not.

Automatic delivery of products: If you are selling digital products, 100%
automation of your business is possible. You can program your website to sell,

collect money and deliver the goods by transmitting the product via email as
attachment or to provide download instructions to your customers.

If your products are tangible then you need to dispatch the products manually
on receiving the intimation from your website. You cannot afford to delay as you
will loose the credibility with your customers. To solve the problem, you can tie-up
with a company or a trusted individual or a courier company, where you can stock
your goods and on receiving payment, your website will send the order details
instantly to your stockiest and a copy to you. And without you getting involved,
your dispatch agent can handle the delivery of the products.

If you are dealing with books, it is a good idea to send the software version of
the book to your customer instantly on receiving the payment, as it will take more
than 2 days for the book to reach.
---------
The fact is, if you do not plan every small activity of your business well in
advance, it is difficult for you to automate your business without making loss.

Lesson 4: Planning your website

2008-03-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

Part III - Your Internet Business

Planning your website
Lesson 4: Planning your website
Lesson 4:

Needless to say, everyone is aware that planning is important in getting
desired results while doing a task. It is more important when it comes to your
business. It is even more important when it comes to your online business, as
you need to plan every small step of your business including your website.

What is your budget for the website? Do you want to save your time and
energy by spending lots of money? Do you want to save money by creating the
website yourself? Its up to you. But designing a website is very simple. It is not as
difficult as it sounds.

If you are ready to spend about Rs.15,000/- per year, you can have everything
made by someone. You only have to apply your mind to promote the business and
earn money. Though it sounds easy, you will still be spending lots of time to get
the desired output from a third party.

There is another option, by spending almost the same amount of money; you
will get powerful software (and support) that will guide you in every aspect of
building and hosting a website, from the scratch. I find this option better than the
first one. Because you will have full control of your website and you are going to
work to get the output you want, still you need not learn anything.

Finally, the best method (the method that I follow!) is to learn and do it yourself.
It may cost you about Rs.2,000/- per year for your website (including the domain
name and hosting). Though it sounds difficult, it is not so. Initially you will spend
lots of time to learn. In the long run it will always pay you to learn web-designing
(even if you are getting your website designed by someone).

Throughout the marketing process, you will need to keep changing your
website here and there. It is practically not possible to get a person to make small

changes every now and then. Another idea is to employ someone who works for
you full-time or part-time. But we suggest you not to increase your overheads until
you start earning. Initially invest only on essentials.

Anyway, whether you want to learn or not, we will show you the process of
creating your website, in a step-by-step manner. It is better if you start working
simultaneously as you read the course. The following are the general rules to
create a successful website:

Content or No Content: You could create a website with good contents
relevant to your product. Give your prospective customers lots of free information
and make them to visit your website regularly and simultaneously sell your
products. Or you could create a no content website (i.e. a website without free
information to the visitors), have a powerful sale letter and take the order. You
need to decide based on your products and target audience.

You have a range of web hosting companies to select from, who may offer free
hosting or charge up to Rs.2,500/- per month. The charges vary depending on the
web space, bandwidth, speed and other facilities. As a thumb-rule you will get the
quality and quantity based on the amount you pay. We will show you how to get a
good, reliable hosting company with minimum cost.

Know your market: Understand your potential customers and build the site
according to their preferences. For example, if your market is mostly business
professionals, then the site must be clean and professional. If your product is
aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults, then your site could be more
informal and relaxed. If you are not certain how the site should be, browse the
internet for a product similar to yours. Visit about 10 different websites and you will
get the idea.

Focus of the site: Imagine you have a shop and a customer visits. What will
you do? You cannot afford to stand and simply watch the customer. You have to
take them through the sale process. The same thing applies to your website also.

Your intention for creating a website is to sell your product / service to the visitors.
So when a visitor reaches your site, he/she should get the clear idea of what you
have for them.

It is amazing but true, if you visit about 100 websites (especially of Indians) that
deal with some products, about 90 websites talk about everything other than how
to order. They have their contact details and ask you to send the cheque or
demand draft to their address. You have just one chance to take the order from a
visitor of your website. There is no guarantee that the visitor will come again. So
you have to do anything and everything to take the order at the first visit itself. You
will very soon learn to write powerful sale letter for your website.

It will be very effective if you dedicate a site for one primary product. A site
offering many unrelated products is often unfocussed. If your business offers many
products, dedicate a unique page for each product, instead of trying to sell them all
from one page.

The Sale Letter: Also called Web Copy, is how you talk to your visitors.
Whether you choose to market using Website or Email or Advertisement, a sale
letter is the heart of your marketing campaign. If you do this correctly you can turn
your visitors to customers. It is the same thing what shopkeepers or salesmen do
to their customers. As this involves marketing of your website, we will discuss
more about this in a lesson dedicated to this topic.

Speed is important: Usually internet users are restless. For them 1 second
seems to be like 10 minutes. Nobody has patience to wait until a website opens
up. You have only about 10 seconds to capture your potential customer's
attention. At least the major portion of your website must load within 4 seconds. To
minimize your load time, keep very few images and keep those image files small.
Use flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) only
if it is important to your presentation.

Navigation: As more and more people go online every day, many of your
visitors are going to be the first time users of the internet. So make your site as
easy to use as possible. Make the site navigation easy and intuitive. If a visitor
(however experienced or inexperienced) has problems navigating, getting
information or understanding the site, then your site is at fault.

You need to keep in mind that users coming from outside your site can enter at
any page, not necessarily from the main page. They need to be able to orientate
themselves quickly. Visitors usually dont have the patience to navigate through
the whole website to find what they are looking for. They need to know where they
are now, where to go next and how to go there. Remember you are here to sell
your product. You cannot afford to lose the attention of your customer.

Consistency: Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. If you
use different theme and colour for every page of your website, your visitors might
think that they reached some other site by mistake. Keep colors and themes
constant throughout your website.

Credibility: Even the most professionally designed website won't sell if your
customers don't believe in you. Provide your legitimate contact information i.e.
your postal address, phone and email address. Make it easy for your customers to
contact you by adding feedback forms and email forms in your site. Make sure that
you reply to your visitors queries almost instantly. This makes them feel that you
are genuine.

A clear privacy statement is one way to build your credibility. Provide a
prominent link to your privacy statement from every page on the site as well as
from any location that you are asking your visitors for personal information.

The undeniable fact is that people are still not comfortable purchasing online.
You need to gain their confidence to take their order. One of the best ways to
make them comfortable is to offer an unconditional, 100% money back guarantee
and keep up to your words.

Download: If you have some files for your visitors to download from your site,
provide clear download instructions. Your website should also state the size of the
file in kilobytes and the estimated time of download for a user having a 56K
modem, DSL, Cable and so on.

Automation: As this is the most important process in your online business,
the next chapter is dedicated for this topic.
-------
The most important stage in designing your website is planning. By now most
probably you have got a picture of your site. Now you must create a blueprint of
your website on paper before you start creating it.

Tools and resources are provided on your CD to help you create your own
website.

Lesson:3 your business plan

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Lesson 3: Your Business Plan

Have you decided about your online venture? Do you have a product to sell?
Or do you have an idea or a source for your product? Did you say no? Then
please go back and read the previous chapters again. Come back along with a
clear picture of your online business and the product (or at least an idea) to sell.
`
This is not an academic education that you learn to nourish your knowledge.
The purpose of this course is, to help you earn money by exposing the techniques
step-by-step. In our experience it will not bring you desired results, if you do not
complete the initial steps before you proceed further.

As you learn the rest of this course you need to mentally relate your future
business and the product to the ideas and techniques that will be explained in the
coming chapters. It is even better if you set a time bound target, so that the
moment you complete this course you can swing into action.

Before we proceed further you should know something very important. Though
many methods of online businesses are taught here, a website is very important
for the growth of your internet business. Most of you already know the reason.
Selling from your website is like selling from a shop (a business owner) and selling
by other means online is like selling on the footpath or selling door-to-door (a
salesman). There is nothing wrong in any of the above methods. You decide which
one you want to be.

It is also important that you should start working on your budget right now,
preferably in two parts. First one is for preliminary works to setup your business.
The second part is to run the business until you start getting returns. By the time
you finish this course you must have your budget ready. We will talk more about
your business plan and the budget in the last chapter.

So you got the overall picture of your business and the product. When you
learn more, you can keep changing or modifying your basic idea that you already
have now. Lets move to the next step.

Idea 10-13

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Idea 10: Newsletter
Choosing Right Topicis the key to success of your Newsletter. It is important
that you spend some time to research and choose the topic. It is worth a lot of
money. Visit a local library and get about 20 magazines (i.e. periodicals not just
books) on special interests like electronics, automobiles, stamp collection, coin
collection, etc. Shortlist top 5 based on their subscriber base (not based on their
circulation). Circulation is the total print of the magazine including subscription and
newsstand copies. Your interest is to attract subscribers having a special interest
to your Newsletter. This identifies 5 topics that most people are already spending
money to read about. Then choose one topic of your liking.

You got the topic. Now you must research whether there is demand for your
newsletter. Get the issues of previous 6 months of the magazine you chose.
Carefully read all the letters published under letters to the editor column. If you
can find 4 or 5 letters on a specific theme or a problem, you can conclude, there is
demand for your newsletter. People are already paying money to read the journal
and they spend time to write letters to the editor to clarify / discuss about a
problem / theme. This shows that they are still hungry about the information.

If you place a very good small display ad in that magazine you can get 2 to 5%
of their subscriber-base. If they have about 1,00,000 subscribers, you can get
about 2,000 subscribers. If you charge about Rs.100 per annum, you can make
about Rs.2 lakh per annum.

Sounds simple and easy, is it? Yes it is. But there is a catch. Your newsletter
should have true value. That is, you should provide with information that is not
available online or that saves lot of time and money for your subscribers. If not, all
your subscribers will be lost in no time. If you have real value, you can multiply the
customer base in a very short time. Once you have established, you can make
more money from the advertisers than the subscribers.

Since marketing of your products are explained in the coming chapters, we will
not discuss here about getting advertisements for your newsletter.

Idea 11: Resale Rights (Buying & Selling)
There are three types of Rights that you can buy or sell. The products
involved are usually intangible like software and information products.

If you buy Basic Resale Rights for a product from the owner, you can sell the
product and keep 100% profits for you. But your customers can only use it, they
cannot sell it again. So your target is the end-user.

Master Resale Rights means that once you buy the rights for a product, you
can sell it and keep 100% profits for you. And you are also allowed to sell the
resale rights to your customers. They can in turn sell the products to their
customers. That means you can target the end-users as well as the marketers
(business owners like you).

When you buy Private Label Rights for a product, usually you get the right to
do anything with the product. You can include your name and contact details in the
product, sell the product and keep 100% profits for you, sell the Resale Rights, sell

the Master Rights or may give it free of cost. However, all that depends upon your
agreement with the owner of the product.

There is something called Giveaway Rights for a product. Usually you get
this right free of cost. You cannot change the contents or you cannot sell them.
You can give these products to anyone and any way you want, but the criterion is
that it should be free of cost. You can offer them free for a subscription or along
with your product.

Idea 12: Resale Rights (Creating & Selling)
You create your own product and sell the Rights(the way you find it suitable)
to others as explained in the Idea 11.

Idea 13: Locate a good Drop Shipper
To make good amount of money, to have less hassle and to make full use of
the power of internet (& automation), we suggest you must start with a product that
can be transmitted automatically to your client on the internet.

For some reason you are not comfortable with any of the above 12 ideas or
you want to multiply your income by marketing few tangible products online
(without laying your hands on them). Then you need to locate some Wholesale
Suppliers who can Drop Ship for you.

The Drop Shippers are those who send the products on your behalf to your
customers, directly from their warehouse, with your business name on it. All you
have to do is to take the order from your customer and pass it to the distributor.
You keep the difference between the wholesale price (the distributor charges you),
and the retail price (you sell to your customer for). Remember, you are responsible
for the whole transaction. You are answerable to your customer for the delivery of
material and its quality and to the drop shipper for their payment.

There are thousands of suppliers like this around the world. This concept is
new to India and very few such people are available here. However you need not

restrict your business to India alone, as the scope of online business is not limited
geographical area.

There are certain points you must take care when you choose a drop shipper.
You have to make sure the company is genuine and are capable of fulfilling their
promises. If not you are in trouble. Research the internet for their reputation and
their past history.

If a drop shipper promises to create your website and give everything for you to
start your business and you just have to pay them a monthly fee or one time
payment, it may be false. To get your ecommerce website done without hassles,
there are professionals available. A drop shipper need not do that for you.
However you need to study their genuineness before coming to a conclusion.

If someone offers you unbelievable offer, better do not believe it. Do not be in a
hurry to take your decision. Think, analyze and decide. A genuine supplier,
products with good quality, attractive prices and speedy delivery are important for
the success of any business.

Idea 6-9

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Idea 6: Compile Experts Knowledge
Select a subject. List a few (10 or 15) well-known experts in the field. Interview
them personally or on the phone. Ask their permission and compile the interviews
into one book or audio MP3 file or CD. Sell it as What experts say about ______?

Select 10 to 15 top selling books on a subject. Extract small sections from the
books. Ask permission from the authors. Make it clear that full credit will be given
to them, the name of their book and their contact details will be published. You
have got a new book ready without any knowledge in the subject! Give an
attractive title based on the subject.

Dont worry about marketing as of now. Your target is to get an idea about your
product before completing this chapter. Soon after that you will learn about
marketing your product!

Idea 7: Archive Websites
You can archive selected websites of a subject by capturing screen shots (use
some software or just press print screen) and copy it in your favourite word
processor like MS Word. Highlight the information available on each site with the
URL directly linking the webpage. Make a PDF file (e-book) and market it.

For example, you may spend some time and list out the educational websites
that provide really valuable information for children. Archive it, probably a set of 5
or 10 e-books, each having information about a subject, e.g. Science, Indian
History, etc. You can either sell each file as an individual product or sell all the
books as one product. You can title the book like 51 websites your kids must visit
to improve their ranks and sell it to parents.

By doing this you are: (1) giving an idea that most parents have not thought
about, (2) saving parents and childrens time by searching and listing the real
good websites and giving them a complete product, (3) saving their money and
efforts, as they save their computer usage and internet browsing time, (4) making
it easy for the parents to teach their kids and (5) helping the children stay ahead in
their studies, provided they make use of your product.

You will find useful software to create an e-book on your course CD.

Idea 8: Create a Tutorial
The accounting software Tallyis hot today in India. Every business needs an
accounting package like this today and people have realized it. But not every
businessperson is expert in accounts or in using computers.

Similarly there are hundreds of useful software packages that need special skill
to use. You may be an expert in a software program that people find difficult to
use. You can create tutorial for such software. It is not difficult to create such
tutorials. Just type-in the step-by-step instructions, for every single screen of the
software - using all your experience. Once you finish with instructions, capture
various screenshots and insert them at appropriate places.

To capture screenshots and insert them into the tutorial you need not be an
expert graphics designer. Just try this: open any screen, press Print Screen key,
open MS Word or any editor where you will type your tutorial and paste it (i.e.
press the keys Ctrl + V). Thats it. Very simple isnt it? After completing the book,
you can convert it to PDF format or HTML format or executable file format
(EXE).

You will find useful software to create an e-book on your course CD.

Idea 9: Joint Ventures
Spend some time and search for software or other online products that are
extremely good but are badly marketed i.e. not widely seen on the internet. Once
you complete this course, just by glancing at their websites and by doing some
simple research, you will be able to tell whether the owner of the product is making
use of the full potential of internet marketing.

Once you have located the right product, contact the owner and get exclusive
marketing rights preferably for the lifetime or at least for 10 years. Guarantee them
to triple their sale in 90 days, or the contract is void (or as you find it practical). It is
always better to sign a Non-disclosure and Non-competition agreement.
Approach an advocate to do it. Then promote the product after learning all the
secrets from the coming chapters.

Idea 2-5

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Idea 2: Do same things differently
Find what others do and do it differently! Go to search engines and locate the
products of your skill. Find what people are already buying or spending money on.
Just add an angle to it and come up with your own new, improved version of those
products or services. If someone is already selling this, find out what is lacking in
their product that you can improve on.

Idea 3: Supplement to Hot selling products
Find a product that is really hot (regardless of how many websites are selling it
more the competition is, better the prospects are!). Imagine if you buy that hot
product, what will be the very next thing you need, think and analyze. Work on
that "next step" product.

For example, one of todays hot products (in offline business) is Mobile
Phone. Every Tom, Dick and Harry is buying the mobile. But no one tells them
how to cut-down the monthly bills and save money. You can sell them a book with
the title How to upgrade your mobile phone, every year, without spending a
rupee. You can show them the various methods to cut-down the monthly bill and
show them that they can upgrade their handset free-of-cost every year.

Remember, you may not be an expert in mobile phones. But you may be an
expert in cutting costs!

Idea 4: Offer Solution to a Problem
Find a problem and give a solution. Just recollect this instance. Recently you
were working on the computer (or in the garden) and you faced some problem.
You thought, if there were some software (or a solution) to cut-down the time and
job involved, it would have been great! Later you found the solution yourself and
solved the problem! What if you convert that idea into a product?

Visit some online forums (like Yahoo or Google groups) and search for the
topic of your interest. Most likely many people will be asking for help with
something that you may have a solution for. Pay special attention if multiple
people are asking for help with the same problem. The more people who have the
problem, the more sales youll make. The easiest sale is made by selling a
solution to a problem people already have.

Look at every innovative product that saves our energy or time or money. All
those products were built on providing to a problem. Visit some local trade
exhibition you will find so many products, displayed for the first time that were built
on some simple ideas.

Idea 5: Re-create Bestsellers
Find the top 10 best selling books or e-books or audio or video. Few will be on
the same topic. Is the topic related to your interest, skill or experience? Then buy 5
to 10 of the bestselling hot products on that topic. Find what is missing in them.
Make an online version of it, if (and only IF) you are in a position to re-create these
products with your own skill and experience. That is, create an e-book or MP3
file or video file. If you give a right title and market it correctly, it is guaranteed to
sell, as the subject is Hot!

It is important to know that you are not supposed to copy a product! If you do
not have any skill or experience in the subject, you are going to breach the law by
simply copying others intellectual property. If you select a subject of your skill, you
are going to learn the current trend and give it to people the way you would have
liked it or the way it would have benefited them more. Got the idea?

If you are a frequent visitor to movie theatres you already know what we are
discussing here! If not, find out a super hitmovie of the season and ask a
frequent viewer, if there was a movie on the same subject or style in the past. You
will be surprised at the reply. Most of the ideas and products are just a variant of

Lesson 2:13 Ideas to find or create a product to sell

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Lesson 2:

13 Ideas to find or create a product to sell

Please do not move on to the next lesson, unless you get an idea about your
product. When you know what you will sell, it will be easy to relate to the marketing
techniques explained in the later lessons. Its not a joke, if you do not decide
about your product now; you may not start your online business ever. (Note:
This is for those who do not have any product to sell.)

Before implementing any of the ideas to create your product, please keep this
in mind. Your product should start from a Want. Your target audience must
want your product. There is a big difference between Want and Need. We need
air and water to survive. But we will want it only when we are in short of it.

So before finalizing your product, think what the need and want of a group or
segment is. You cannot sell meat to vegetarians or ice-cream to Eskimos. When
you finalize the product, it will be easy for you to understand who your audience is.

It is important that you should know and understand your target audience very
well. Only then it will be possible for you to sell your product.

Idea 1: Sell Your Skill
>>What are you specialized in?
>>Do you feel that your friends rely on your advice on a specific subject?
>>Can you think of a product or service linked with your knowledge?
>>Are you already in a business or a job that involves a product or service?
>>If you already deal with a product, is it possible to convert the product or
your knowledge about that product into a book or e-book or video or audio
format?
I think you got the idea!!!

If you are marketing mobile phones, you could write a book like How to
purchase a mobile handset for 50 rupees less than the dealers cost or a

Salesmen Reference Manual. Or you can promote Consultation in your line of
expertise as your service.

Part II - Planning your business

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Part II - Planning your business

Lesson 1: Understanding your Niche
Lesson 1:

Be it a conventional business or an online business, making or breaking
depends on your product and your service after sale. If you have a good
product you make money. You may be an expert marketer, if you do not have a
good product; you will not remain in business for long!

The idea of this chapter is to stir-up and stimulate your brain to get an
incredible idea out of it (before you complete the next chapter). Unless you get
involved in this process, it is impossible for us to achieve that.

As you read various ideas listed in the next chapter, keep your mind open and
analyze every idea based on your present situation. Follow the instructions
diligently. If you do so, by the time you complete the next chapter, you will certainly
have an idea or a product ready to be sold.

Understand this while you plan your product
In the real life business, customers enter your shop, you talk to them show
them the products or convince them to go for a particular product, they negotiate,
you give them discount, they buy or reject. The online business is different. You
plan everything in advance, the product, the price, the sale-letter, the discount /
offer, etc. The customers reach your website or you reach them via email /
advertisement. They read and make-up their mind and buy or reject.

On the Internet, you need not repeat the selling process for every prospect.
Once you plan and setup the system, the computer takes care of everything. Your
job is to constantly test the results. If the results are not satisfactory, change the
process and test it again.

Many of the ideas of making money on the Internet are absolutely different
from the conventional ways of a real-life business and are almost limitless - limited
only to your imagination!

Certain products appear more suitable for offline sales. For example,
perishable products like vegetable or food and the products that involve smell /
taste / touch or services that involve personal interaction like interior design or
engineering products. For such products, the internet can be used as a marketing
media to attract the clients and can be partly used in the selling process like online
presentation, etc.

If you want to setup a purely hands-free, virtual business, the best suitable
products are digital products, like information products, music, movies, education,
communication, software, photography, and financial transactions. That does not
mean that you cannot sell non-digital products or services online.

Niche explained
As a rule, to be successful in your online venture, you should create a niche for
yourself. The word Niche is explained as A situation or an activity specially
suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature.

You must know your strengths and passion before you choose a product
to promote. If you deal with a product or provide a kind of service that you are not
passionate about (just for the sake of earning money), you cannot run the show for
long.

A niche product is not only the one that suits you; it should also be of any or
all of the following natures:

Rarely available in the market (like spare parts of imported products, etc.).

Remember, nobody will order a toaster or a mixer from you and wait for 5
days to receive it, when they can buy it today at a local store!

High value for money. It need not be necessarily a cheap product; it could

be even an expensive product having more value than the price

Suitable to people staying in remote locations

Suitable for a particular segment of people (like physically challenged, etc.)

Tangible products that involve embarrassing purchases (like sexual

products)

Provide solution to a problem (Book on fat reduction solves obesity

problem)
How to research the internet for a Product?
The Ideas 1 and 2 mentioned in the next chapter deal with your skill. You will
research the internet for a product based on your own experience or skill. So most
likely you will do it with less effort.

The next chapter will show you various methods to find the hot products that
people are ready to pay for. The rest of this course will teach you to find the
market where such people are available and how to reach them or how to
promote the product.

The following exercise will help you find the (niche) product that you are
looking for. This process will allow you to find if people are searching the internet
for the particular product or service and to find how many websites cater for that
demand. To do this you dont need experience. You just need some time and
patience until you get the desired result.

First you need to make a list of about 50 words or topics or products or
services. Try to list the things you enjoy doing, the things you are good at, any
special skills you may have or any topics or skills you may like to learn. Once you
have the list ready, rank the list in the order of preference i.e. the most preferred
subject on top and the least at the bottom.

Take each word / subject and make a few specific phrases based on your
interest. For example, if the subject is Drawing, you could write Cartoon
Drawing or Learn Perspective Drawing.

Next step is to study the available products in the market that are related to the
list you have just made and number of websites that promote them. Open any of
the famous Search Engines (preferably more than one) and enter the phrases one
at a time (with quotes and without quotes). Note down how many web pages are
listed for each phrase. Carefully see the types of products being sold in the
market, their cost and whether any of the products is of your interest. At this point
if any of the products attracts your attention, take note of the changes that you can
make and the ways to do it.

To make your job easy, we have provided the tools you require for the
research in the CD supplied to you along with this book.

Now open the Keyword Tools (one at a time), enter the phrases and note down
the results. Keyword tools tell you how many people have searched the internet for
the phrase you have entered.

Finally, analyze demand and supply. For example, a search for Learn
Perspective Drawing at Altavista.com resulted 141000 (Supply). And at Overture
Keyword Selector Tool, a search for Perspective Drawing resulted 3632
(Demand).

Please remember, it is almost impossible to find a product that has more
demand than the supply. You need to settle for a product that has more demand
and less supply as compared to other products.

If you find a product that has more demand than the supply, you are lucky.
Please jump into the market instantly and start creating or procuring a product.
Marketing these products would be very easy and most profitable.

One point I would like to stress here: For the first time when you develop
your internet business, you have to spend lots of your time and energy to
accomplish every single step. But once the business takes-off you will work
hardly for about an hour a day (or not work at all). Those who think that

starting an internet business is easy, will dropout soon after trying for a month or
so.

Though you have to spend lots of time and energy to find a product that has
more demand than the supply, do not get trapped into it. Soon you are going to
learn how to identify the market and promote a product, even if the supply is more
than the demand. As of now your focus should not be distracted from finding an
idea or a product or service to sell it online (before you finish the next lesson).

Take a decision NOW

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Take a decision NOW

Its time to take your decision regarding your new venture. In the previous
chapters we have transmitted the clear idea of Internet Business to you. You got
the whole, basic idea of making money on the internet.

Soon we are going to show you every minute step involved in making money
using all the 6 major ways mentioned in the previous chapter. Before you learn all
the techniques, it is most important that you draw a clear picture about your future
venture.

To help you draw the picture, we have small but very meaningful interview that
may change your life forever. Take your own time to think thoroughly before you
answer each of the questions listed below. Please make sure you are not
disturbed when you answer the questions. By the time you complete this chapter,
you should have a clear picture. Are you ready with a paper and pen?

Do you have a product (or service) to sell?

Is it a physical (tangible) product or a digital product?

Are you going to promote one major product or multiple products?

(Did you answer No to the first question? Not a problem. You will be able to answer first 3
questions after you complete the whole book. But for the sake of your own success, PLEASE do
not skip other questions. Answer all the questions after you analyze your current situation and
knowledge.)

Do you want to make your online business, part-time or full-time?

At present do you have some source of income or support, to withstand

until you start earning money from the new online venture?

What is your financial position today, are you in debt?

If you are in debt, have you made (at least temporary) arrangements so that

your current financial problems do not disturb your focus on the new
venture?

Are you aware that you need not invest a huge amount of money to start an

online business (unlike a conventional business)?

Do you know that just learning the techniques alone will not fetch you any

money?

Do you know that you need to work hard to succeed in your online

business?

Are you ready to apply your idea, time, efforts and little money to start an

online business?

Your profits will be more or less the same when you invest:

Little money and lots of efforts & time or
More money and less time & efforts
Do you agree?

Do you want to invest little money or more money? Are you prepared to

work accordingly?

Have you thought about your budget?

Have you already fixed your target and the time limit to achieve it?

If you have answered all the above questions diligently, I am sure you got the
clear picture of your future online venture.

Beware of Online scams

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Beware of scams!
You reach a website and that gives you one of the following promises:

"You don't even need to use a computer!"
"You don't have to use the Internet to make money on it!"
"Just put up a Web page, do nothing, and cash huge cheques!
"You don't have to know anything about the Internet or computers!"

they are simply misleading and you will get to know the catch (the real fact) only
after you pay your money. Or it could be an outright scam (i.e. not having a
genuine product or service worth the money you are paying!).

These days, there are few so called internet marketers promote illegal
activities in the name of Network Marketing. Please note that Network Marketing
or MLM is not illegal, but some illegal activities are named as Network
Marketing.

Beware; people involved in scams are becoming more intelligent day-by-day.
They even go one step ahead and offer you Money-back Guarantee. Once you
pay them, no one will be available to communicate with (but their website will still
be there and inviting more people to pay them!).

If you pause and think before you proceed, its easy to differentiate genuine
business from scam. There is a simple but unbreakable law of nature. That is You
cannot get Something for Nothing! or You can't get anything sweet without hard
work! Keep that in mind before you pay your money to someone!

6 Major ways of making money online

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6 Major ways of making money online

1. Selling your own products or services
This is, by far the best method of doing business online (for that matter even in
conventional business). You be the creator / manufacturer and be your own
dealer. You are dependant only on your clients.

Dont worry, if you do not have any product and have no idea of what to sell,
have patience. After completing this course, you will be able to create your own
product, if you are willing to put-in your efforts and time.

2. Selling products or services of othersYou do not have your own product to sell and you have no time or willingness
to create a product. You still can sell products online. Soon you will be provided with ways and means to strike a deal with others and get their products to sell. We will guide you to choose the products of your interest & skill and provide you with reliable, region specific resources to choose the products to sell.

3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is nothing but recommending (not selling) othersproducts or
services from your website or through email or using pay-per-click programs like
Google Adwords, etc. If you are consistent you can make enough money from this
method alone. We will discuss in detail about this in a later chapter.

Important note: If you are marketing through email, never think of spamming.
You will not only lose your business, you will also lose the trust and reputation.
See Email Marketing Techniques section later in this book for more information.

4. Google Adsense
If you decide to have your own website, create it with good content, lots of free,
useful information on the topic of your expertise. Register with Google and
advertise on your website. You will make money for every click that your visitors
do. This is hottest topic in the field today. There are lots of techniques involved in
this method that need to be discussed in detail.

5. Subscription to your newsletter
We will discuss more about newsletters later. For now you should be aware
that you can choose a subject of your interest or the one that you are an expert in
and provide lots of useful information on the subject via a weekly or monthly
newsletter (also known as ezine).

6. Advertisements on your website and/or newsletter
If the traffic to your site is considerably good, in addition to Adsense you can
also get others to advertise on your website. You can charge them per banner
impression or per click basis. Remember, to generate revenue on advertising you
have a long way to go. If other site owners have to consider your site for
advertising, your site should have heavy traffic, at least half of the Yahoo or Rediff.

You can get others to advertise in your newsletter. This is same as getting
advertisements for your website, before approaching others to advertise, you must
first establish yourself. That is, your ezine must reach many readers (you must
have lots of subscribers)

Other few methods of earning money online
There are many more ways of earning money that may not be termed as
Internet Marketing. These are more like a part-time job. So we will not be
discussing in detail about these in this course. Some of the opportunities
mentioned here, are presently not available India. As the internet keeps changing
and since more and more companies and individuals make use of the full potential

of the internet, soon you will find them in India too! The following are few examples
of making money:

Writing Contents, Articles, Sale-letters, etc. (write for others and charge

them per job basis)

Online Marketing Surveys (answer few questions and get paid for

participating in the survey)

Network Marketing business (using online methods to promote your real life

multilevel business)

Mystery Shopping Business (Go out with your family to the specific shop /

hotel, buy or order food, pay and leave. Then evaluate overall customer
service and write your report about it. You will be paid for your report and /
or your expenses will be reimbursed by the survey company)

Personal Shopper Business (You could shop for someone who is unable to

go out for shopping, like a senior citizen or one who just doesn't have the
time for shopping or could be an upscale client who looks to you for your
expertise and taste in picking out right fashions / products)

Collection Agency (As collection agency, you help businesses to collect

their money from past due accounts. You would contact people who owe
money to your clients via mail and telephone, in order to ensure payment.
You are an investigator to find missing people and you are, a negotiator to
arrange for payment plan, which suits the needs of both, your client and the
defaulter.)

Virtual Assistant Business (Be at home and work for companies or busy

individuals as a Secretary or Assistant. Similar concept is already in
existence in India. There are companies who take-up data processing /
designing jobs from the internet, get the job done locally and charge their
clients on the net. Now you too can find sources and accept such jobs on
the internet!)
Can you imagine the unlimited amount of opportunities available on the
internet? It is just a start in India. Simply keep learning and move forward slowly
and just see how much you are going to earn over the period. Since you are at
present not involved in this business, you cannot imagine right now!

Basic concepts of online earning money

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The Basic Concepts

E-commerce

The process of sale/purchase of goods or services over the internet is e- commerce. The transaction normally takes place on secure servers using software (like shopping-carts) and electronic pay services (like bank account, credit cards and debit cards). Most vital part of the e-commerce is doing a business transaction on the internet, normally without the use of manpower or cost of manpower.

Past - Present - Future, In India

Way back in 1999, I approached a person who then was the Vice-President for Credit Card division of a prominent bank in India, as I wanted to accept credit cards online at one of my websites. The Banker believed that "those who use Credit Card to buy or sell on the internet would burn their fingers" and that "e-commerce would come to an end", hence he advised me to forget the idea of e-commerce.

In contrast, according to Forrester Research (an independent technology research company, established in 1983), electronic commerce generated sales worth US $12.2 billion in 2003. According to the Jupiter Research, online sales reached US $65 billion in 2004 and it is projected to reach US$117 billion by Year 2008.

Today 99.9% of US based websites (that sell products online) accept credit cards online and almost 50% of the websites launched by Indians are accepting credit cards online.
All the major internet giants like Google, Yahoo, eBay, etc. are targeting India. The reason is, over 50 per cent of India's billion-strong population is under 25 years of age. Indian professionals have raked in the highest pay hikes in the Asia-Pacific region for the second year in succession (as of 2005). Fresh graduates in India command annual salaries between Rs 1.8 lakh and Rs 3.2 lakh.
The rest is left to you to research & understand the future of e-commerce in India.

Warning

If you are in a conventional business, you may not believe what you are going to learn in this book. You are requested to keep your knowledge about conventional business aside, until you understand the whole concept of internet marketing.
There is no doubt, that you have an advantage; you can derive your own formula by combining both the concepts - at a later stage. However, for now, please do not mix your idea of conventional business with online business.

Get an 'Idea'

If you want to start an e-commerce business from scratch, you just need a 'product' or an 'idea' to sell. If you already have one, then you may straight away start implementing the techniques shown here. If not, start thinking about it right now. You will get a clear picture about 'ideas' and 'products' in the following chapters. After that it will be easy for you to create your own product to sell.

About the money you are going to makeMany people think that 'there is " one secret" to success and if only they could find that key to success, they can simply sit and increase their bank balance'. It isnot true. You need to work on "many secrets" to earn good amount of money on the internet.

If you wanted to start your own internet business, just because others are making lots of money, it is almost certain that you are NOT going to earn any money at all.We could have easily promised you that 'you will start earning immediately on starting your internet business'. There are people who started with zero and making millions of dollars a year now. It's happening, and it's almost possible that

FAQ -Online Earning Options

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Is the internet business suitable for everyone?

No. Internet business is not for everyone.The reason is not that it is difficult. Not because it is not affordable. You do notrequire any special qualification!For that matter, teaching profession or doctor profession or a job or a business arenot for everyone.

Just because you want to earn fame, you cannot become a pop singer. Justbecause you want to earn money, you cannot get into a business.You need passion to do anything in life, be it a job or business. If you havepassion for internet business, then this business is for you.If you do not know what an internet business is, it is quite natural that you may nothave passion for the business. But you can learn the business and then decidewhether this business is for you.

I have no experience in business. Can I successfully earn money online?

If you have fulfilled the above criterion (passion or liking), then you cansuccessfully earn money online.Nobody had any experience when they newly started a business. If you need experience start doing the business. If you want to learn swimming, just get intothe water first.Your success depends on your goal, your efforts and persistence. You may fail 10times before you succeed.

Do I need any experience in computers or software?

Though it will be an advantage, you do not really need any experience to start an online business.But please be ready to learn the basics like browsing internet, using some software like word processors (like MS Word), ftp programs, etc. Otherwise youmay have to depend on others to accomplish simple tasks, which may delay your day-to-day jobs and you may end-up spending more on startup cost.

I don't have time to do business. How much time do I need to run a part-time

internet business?

Let us assume that you presently earn an 'X' amount per month working from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday. If I show you few ways to earn the same amount per month, working from home (or anywhere you choose) for 2 hours a day, will you create time to do business? If you want to work part-time you just need 2 hours of focused efforts everyday. If you cannot create even 2 hours per day to double your present income, you better continue doing what you do at present.

Do I need an office to earn money online? Is there any timing to work?

No. You do not need an office and there is no specific timing to do internet business. That is the essence of online business. You can work from anywhere at anytime. The only criterion is you need a computer and access to internet. And that is the major drawback of online business. Throughout our life we are trained to do our work in a prescribed pattern. When we are given freedom to work the way we want, we cannot complete any work at all. You need to be self-disciplined to become successful in online business.

How much will I earn?

That depends on your understanding of the business, your product, your target market, your marketing strategy, the amount of your productive time and the kind of your focused effort. As you gain experience, you earnings increase beyond your expectations. The true leverage is possible only in internet business.

You have always been talking about "part-time". Can you teach me to run a "full-time" internet business?

I need not teach you to run a full-time internet business. When you start earning good money in part-time internet business, you will automatically make it full-time.

How much do I need to invest to start an internet business?

f you already have a computer or if you want to operate the business from a cybercafé, you may have to invest about Rs.5,000/- or less towards startup cost and about Rs.5,000/- towards initial marketing expenses (excluding your stock, if any).

This estimation is applicable if you are ready to work hard and make use of the methods and secrets mentioned here. I have seen people investing more than Rs.30,000/- just to start the business.
Leave alone the amount they spend for marketing.

I have nothing to sell. How can I start a business?

If you are ready to implement the ideas and methods explained in this course, you will certainly have a product or service to promote.

Someone is already doing what I wanted to do. How can I compete without

any experience?

As of now just forget about your present experience. You need to gain that only

after you start your business.

Please understand that your internet business is not limited to a country or a

region or a segment of people or a segment of business. You have a whole world

to target. You can focus on a different market.

If nothing works-out, better find a new product or new business.

I have read many books like this and have tried plenty of businesses. What

you people teach are not practical. Do you guarantee my success?

Yes, I too have read lots of books. All books do not expose the complete information that is actually required to start an online business. You will get very small information (that is really useful) by reading a book having more than 100 pages. The fact you must accept is, all the free books available on the net do not have any useful information at all (except a very few and I will give you such good books from my website www.free-ebooks-software.com). It depends on whether you have read good books.

I have boiled down all the known facts about internet business and unknown resources (I call them as "Secrets") in about 100 pages. I know my market and I have seen people selling such books for about US $197 (that is about Rs.9,000/- + shipping charges). Only difference is they offer you more than 500 pages and some offer more than 1000 pages. The question is do you have time and patience
to read. You want to start the business tomorrow, isn't it?

I am confident that anyone who follows the methods and implements the secrets revealed in my home-study course can certainly earn money. But still I will not guarantee your success, as I do not know you personally. I do not know if you will understand the business or you will work hard or you will be persistent.

Very first thing toOnline beginners

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There is a lot of information freely available on the internet and there are some
data that will save and multiply your money. These are not within most of our
reach or we may not have come across them. There are quite a number of people
offering various information products FREE of cost. You may have downloaded
loads of e-books free of cost from the internet.

You may already be in possession of some precious and invaluable data saved
on your hard disk, but you may not know which are precious and which are not. At
the same time you may not be aware as to which one will bring you success, as
you did not experiment with them. I call this sense of awareness as ‘the Secrets’.

These (secrets) are the key to success that will enable you to create income for
you, if used correctly. These are the resources that will save you lots of money
and time. These are the websites / links that I accidentally reached during my 6
years of internet experience and was shocked to see that they were available for
FREE of cost or unbelievably low priced.