Building A Business On The Internet

I meet a lot of people who are interested in having their own website, but most do not understand what it is to use their website to extend their marketing reach. A website is an additional channel to reach your target market and can be a sales channel. Your website should serve a purpose, so don't build a website just to have an internet presence. A website is a marketing channel, and if you have an existing business, be sure to promote your website off-line.

Many of the business owners I know should build an ecommerce website. Ecommerce solutions offer many benefits, from web hosting to shopping carts, and even custom solutions. A website is an extension of your business or the service you provide. Make sure the potential client know what you provide and can buy or sign up for your service right there on your website. Make it easy for your potential client to do business with you.

Especially if you have a retail channel, a website should be an extension of that channel, ie an on-line shop. That is what ecommerce solutions can provide for your business. Setting up a retail channel on the internet needs to be done well to convince your potential customers to buy from you. A website based business, ecommerce or on-line shop, is a face of your business and should reflect the way you conduct your business off-line.

I know of a bakery owner who wants a website, but instead of paying someone to build a professional looking website, asked her teenage nephew to build one for her using a free website service. There is nothing wrong with using a free service like blogger.com, but not when it reflects your business. While I am all for working with teenagers, unless you provide a specific brief on what your website should convey, it can turn out different from what you expect. As a business owner, you should there are no short-cuts nor should a website be a afterthought. It is part of your marketing channel, and the rules of marketing applies.

9 Year Old Webmaster

I had an amazing experience today. I received a phone call from a business associate of mine, and he told me his nephew needed some help with his web project. So I said, "Sure, why not? Come on over to my office this afternoon."

This kid turned up and he already knows more about html than I do. But he needed help to put a video together to go on his website design. He had until November of this year to turn in this project, and the marks he get will determine if he passes or fails this subject.

I was surprised to learn that the school actually had this subject and it counts in the school examination. I had to know his level of skill, so we chatted for a bit and, let me tell you, he asked some very good questions. Most of it was on the technical side, but his questions were more in depth than most adults I talk to.

Kids today are amazing. Imagine knowing how to put a website together at 9 years old. Like I said, he knows more about html than I do. But it's what you do with the knowledge that matters. So we spent 2 hours together, we went through how to put a video and audio together using Movie Maker. Than we worked on the layout of his website, and the navigation. This made the presentation more interesting, and the website look better. This isn't cheating, I just gave him some tips, and basic knowledge on how a website should look like. Something his teacher should have done but either did not or did not know how to.

I will be meeting with him to review his project next week. Hopefully he will have completed it, as he had already done the content and graphics. He just needed help to pull it together. And he got what I was saying, just like that! That was what is amazing. I'm going to help guide this kid. His mother said he wasn't sleeping well at night being too worried about this subject. It seems that there was no-one he could talk to for advice.

After hearing the comments his teacher said, I have to agree with my friend's opinion of the teacher. On the other hand, I'm not a teacher so I wouldn't know what is the norm in teaching a 9 year old. What I do know is, if he can handle it, I give him the tips. The way it looks, this is one future webmaster.

After The First Year In Internet Marketing

I realized I have not be blogging here since March 2009. Been busy with off-line work and maintaining my other websites. It has been slightly over a year since I ventured into internet marketing. If truth be told, I have had less than stellar results.

Where Did I Go Wrong?
1. Following the advice of just about every internet marketer/Guru out there. I am talking about some serious information overload here. It wasn't the hype, I'm a marketer and I recognize what hype is. No, I just had to try everything once just to see if it worked.

2. Lack of focus equals a waste of time. There are so many ways you can do business on the internet, that I couldn't decide on a business model. I failed terribly in affiliate marketing, stank at building a list and kept trying to do too many niches.

3. Tried to do everything myself and ended up being less efficient and effective than any reasonable person should be. Again, this was because I just had to try everything once, just to see for myself what it was all about.

4. The Make Money Online niche is the bane of all newbies. I liked marketing but that was really no excuse why I built a website on internet marketing. I had no credentials at all. It is understandable because when you just start out, you are reading everything there is about internet marketing. So it made sense (to me at least) that I ended up down this route, and besides you learn best if you built a website. It would have been better had someone actually set me right. As it were, almost everyone I knew didn't know squat about internet marketing.

5. Didn't have the know-how to capitalize on my search engine results.

I am glad to say that I finally came to my senses and created a website about something I knew about. So 6 months after I built my first site, I built my second site, www.AboutSabah.com. At least that is working out. It could have been worst. At least, I didn't blow a lot of money of stuff I didn't need.

So Did Anything Go Right At All?
1. The first ranked on the first page, first result for my keyword. Out of 300,000 pages. Not bad for a first website. The second website also ended up on first page, but not the first position for my keyword. Out of 18 million. I would like to say I knew what I was doing, but I have to give the credit to wordpress. It is awesome.

2. EzineAritcles accept all my submissions, so this meant I could at least string a sentence together in English. Just didn't have the motivation to continue after writing ten articles.

3. My first website, even though on the first position/ first page of google didn't really see much visitors. It also managed to get a page rank of 1 after 9 months. My second website, averages 3000 visits per month, from 2000 unique visitors by the third month. Achieved a page rank of 2 in the fourth or fifth month.

What I Learnt So Far?
Here are some of the lessons I learnt about internet marketing.
1. Follow your passion, and focus on creating content for it.
2. Don't be shy in marketing your website and asking for the sale.
3. Leverage on the first website if you want to start a second.
4. Stop reading about internet marketing and start working on your website. Develop your business model.
5. Internet marketing is almost exactly like off-line marketing. It's a business and all marketing rules apply. The only difference is the environment and the channel.

Twitter Followers

Twitter has been all over the news of late. Imagine my surprise when I opened my email and saw this.

|| Mike Filsaime (mikefilsaime) is now following your updates on Twitter.||

Most likely it was automated since he has 19,480 followers. But still, it was a nice surprise. One can always dream that Mike Filsaime talks to you.

Follow me on twitter, and I will follow you: http://twitter.com/adriansabah