dot COM report » Online Business

Making Money On The Internet – One Step At A Time

dotCOMreport — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:03:11 +0000

There are a lot of ways of making money on the internet that go way beyond just selling left over stuff on an auction site. Two of the most common ways to generate some part time income, or making a full time living, online are affiliate marketing and to some people even network marketing.

Both are great online businesses to start since they are easy to do (learning the skills won’t take long or be hard) and you can start either business with very little money.

Affiliate marketing is when you earn money for selling a product or service. Don’t let the word ‘selling’ freak you out. When it comes to an online business all your selling will revolve around sending people to your website (you will be given a free website for whatever affiliate company you are signed up with).

Network marketing (sometimes called multilevel marketing or mlm) is a way to make commissions by selling a product or service. The difference is that with network marketing you are building an organization. Every time you sign up another business builder they will become your downline.

This is so important because you will receive a percentage of the sales made by all the people in your downline. The bigger you build your organization (and the bigger your down line) the more money you will make. Everyone who signs up under you will also receive commissions from everyone who signs up under them.

With both methods of generating online income your number one job will be to find the most cost effective method to driving a lot of traffic to your website. There are a lot of ways to drive traffic online. Some are time consuming but pretty cheap, others are quicker but will take more money.

One of your very first steps will need to be to find out which way of generating traffic you want to learn about. Once you’ve found a method that you like and can afford, you need to learn everything you can about that method. Become an expert in that method (and start making money) then go on to learn other methods.

With the internet things change often and quickly. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to your traffic generation techniques. It’s best to have 3 to 5 different methods to drive traffic. But don’t try to take on too much all at once. Start with one method first and only add another method once you’ve perfected the first method (perfection means that you’re getting enough traffic on a steady basis to make money).

Don’t expect to get rich off just one product or one way of driving traffic, it’s a numbers game. You will need to get a lot of traffic because only a small percentage of the people will actually buy from you.

There are lots of ways of making money on the internet, it’s really about finding the method that appeals to you. Once you’ve figured out what you want to do, find the best method of driving traffic and then just rinse and repeat until you’re making the amount of money you want to make.

7 Reasons Why Seasonal Marketing Sells Products

dotCOMreport — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:50:19 +0000

I thought this would be a good time of year to promote “Seasonal” based marketing. These celebrations, big and small, are a great time to connect with potential customers so put on your thinking cap and read on….

Now, what is so special about each celebration? They all increase the selling of products. There are many reasons why you should consider seasonal marketing to promote your products, including the seven which are listed below:

1. People tend to buy more products during seasonal celebrations than the rest of the year.

2. People are determined to purchase products, so it is easier to persuade them to purchase a product you offer (assuming of course you are doing it the right way).

3. Most purchases concern gifts to others, therefore quality is what matters while price is less significant.

4. The time of celebration is limited and specific. Therefore people cannot leave for tomorrow what they need to buy for the celebration. They must act in a timely manner. This urgency is a huge advantage to marketers trying to sell products.

One other motivating factor for buyers is that seasonal products are limited and something they have in-mind may not be available in the stores at a different time.

5. People connect seasonal celebrations with their childhood. That makes them more emotional and as you might already know emotion is the key factor that makes people buy a product.

6. It is not always necessary to offer a celebration related product to increase your sales. Even a valued Internet product like software or e-books can be a valued gift.

7. Marketers do not have to invent new or never before used methods to create interest in seasonal products.

The old traditional marketing techniques are effective and can still be applied. People want to buy because of the “celebration”. In fact, many people may not see their purchase as buying at all, but as an act of making someone (including themselves) more happy.

Naturally, seasonal marketing may use different strategies to promote products. Instead of offering a product discount try the following:
- Offer a portion of the price of your product to charities and make people feel they contribute to this charity themselves.
- Try a special offer like “purchase one product and get the other at half price” or “purchase one product and get another free to offer as a gift”.

These types of special offers can very easily increase your sales volume.

So, do not hesitate. Start promoting your products (or affiliate products) now. And don’t forget, once a celebration ends, there are many others right around the corner. People are always looking for reasons to purchase gifts for others or for themselves.

Business Appmatcher Launched by Rackspace

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:42:49 +0000

A matchmaking engine for your business? That’s what Rackspace is hoping to bring you. Appmatcher helps businesses locate apps that can assist them in their duties. Businesses can use AppMatcher to find apps for everything from human resources to project management to accounting. The engine intends to match businesses to apps based on their profile information.

AppMatcher is essentially going to do for your business what matchmaking websites do for your love life. A business profile will be detailed in such a way to allow the engine to recommend apps your business can actually use. This should save a lot of time companies are otherwise spending researching and testing apps only to find they’re not useful at all.

Users fill out a profile by answering questions about their industry, department and title, company size. AppMatcher takes this info and identifies apps it thinks best meet the user’s specs. These results generally include apps the user may not have even known existed.

AppMatcher has ties and links into feeds out to Facebook and Twitter for those questioning the social media integration.

This engine may provide the key for exposing useful apps to businesses and their employees without wasting their time finding the best ones.

Bing’s xRank Shut Down

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 23:51:31 +0000

Bing has confirmed that xRank, the search service available on the Bing homepage, has been shut down. Attempts to use xRank will bring users back to the Bing home page.

xRank was released back in 2007 as Bing’s answer to “Google Trends.” xRank was billed as a “cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not.” It used search information to track the most popular queries on Bing. Results were posted in different categories.

This may come as bad news to users who relied on these trends to dictate SEO strategies and content development. Websites focusing on recent celebrity news were known to rely heavily on xRank as a way of seeing which celebs people were actually searching to find more information on.

Attention Advertisers: Facebook Reveals Details About People Who “Like” Content

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:39:50 +0000

Facebook posted a note on their site, sharing some demographic information about the biggest users of the “Like” button on Facebook.

Facebook analysts indicate that those using the Like button are more engaged, connected, and active than the average user. They have more Facebook friends and are more interested in exploring Facebook content. They are also more likely to click on links to external sites.

Facebook goes on to give advice about reaching this crowd. They suggest implementing various social plugins and publishing interesting content on Facebook. Personalizing the content is more attractive to these engaged users.

All of this information is great news for advertisers and businesses alike. Advertisers can use this information to create ads more likely to be noticed and clicked on by these active users, and businesses can create Facebook pages more likely to be “Liked” by fans they can keep interested in the content.

Google Docs Starting to Look A Lot Like Microsoft Word

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:29:56 +0000

Google has good news for all the bloggers, publishers, and authors out there. Finally, Google Docs has made it easy to track changes made to documents.

Google has just announced a new revision history interface with a series of changes all making Google Docs much more user friendly. Users have six new popular fonts to choose from, updated spreadsheets, and text highlighting to show when others make changes.

These document changes are easily tracked with the help of a color-coding system similar to that in Microsoft Word.

These changes lead one to question if writing major pieces will soon be done with the use of programs like Google Docs versus popular word processing programs like Microsoft Word. This could be a significant shift for individuals and companies just starting up. Word processing programs can be expensive to acquire and eliminating this expense leaves room for investment elsewhere.

Goodbye JPEG, Hello WebP?

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:21:42 +0000

If Google has it their way, the JPEG will be completely eliminated and replaced with their new open format for images; WebP.

The advantages of WebP? Smaller sizes and a faster loading time. This doesn’t mean the images will necessarily look better, but they will be around 40% smaller. With almost 65% of bytes on the web being taken up by images, a change in formats could mean a web that’s almost 26% faster.

Of course, the problem remains with the power of the JPEG. It’s popularity is hard to deny, with the format dominated the web, as well as mobile phones and cameras. Only a company with the power and influence of Google would even consider challenging this norm. Google does own Picasa, which may help with their desired conversion to WebP. Along with that is the Chrome browser, which will most like be supporting WebP-formatted images soon.

Businesses should keep a close eye on this development as this may effect how images need to be formatted and uploaded. It might be best to all for support of these images sooner rather than later as Google has a way of making their presence known.

Some Timely Tips For Making Your Web Site More Flexible

dotCOMreport Editor — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:20:45 +0000

The success of your e-commerce business depends largely on the speed of your web site, both literally and figuratively. A web site that’s slow to load is likely to be promptly closed, while a web site that’s slow to be updated will most likely experience the same fate. This becomes a major factor in your SEO.

Your web site requires a million more changes than you first anticipate on start-up. The landscape of SEO and e-commerce is constantly changing, and because of that, your web site needs to change right along with it. Remember when the Google Analytics’ new tracking system was made available? Or how the the “Like” button? How quickly was your web site updated to include these new features? How soon were your ready for iPad or the latest mobile phone apps? Speed matters. This is evident with the revenue-driving affiliates you may have. Those generating the most revenue to your site are generally the quickest to adapt the new SEO.

If you’re reading this and realizing you’re behind the e-commerce curve, here’s some key areas you can focus on for improvement:

Be sure you have a dedicated team working for you. The web site should be their main priority.
Have a reasonable budget that allows you to build a quality team.
Have a custom CMS that quickly gives designers, merchandisers, and writers access to what they need.
Be sure your modules and platforms are flexible. What works now may not work in three months. Make sure your platform can change easily.
Have a web site “testing system” in place that allows you to fix copy mistakes and errors quickly.

These suggestions don’t absolve you from great content, which is the heart of your web site. A successful site depends on much more than speed, however, without this quality, your customers may be less forgiving.

Updated Keyword Tool Released By Google

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 23:20:03 +0000

Google has a new keyword tool. Google has called this new keyword tool “The Keyword Tool”. This new version has finally come out of beta and is ready to replace the two previous predecessors. Those were the familiar tools of the original keyword tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool.

In order to access the new The Keyword Tool, you will go to the same web address as you went to access the original keyword tool. While you can access the new tool without having to be signed in, Google recommends being logged into your AdWords account.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that you will see lower search volume counts. This is because Google has changed how the Global Monthly Searches are calculated. Local Monthly Searches are also calculated differently now. The statistics in these columns are based on search traffic from Google.com only now. In the past, the statistics also had traffic from search partners.

There are several benefits from “The Keyword Tool” that users will be able to enjoy. There are flexible search options. Now you will be able to search by any combination of URL, keyword, and category if available and you will get a single set of results. It is easier to filter results by match type, either keyword or word. Negative keywords can be added easily and there are advanced options such as filters that are based on local searches.

This could be extremely useful for anyone that works online and especially for businesses that rely heavily on keywords such as affiliate marketers or bloggers. The added ability of local and mobile search results can help gain your business exposure and you will easily be able to narrow down what keywords and keyword phrases are working the best for your business.

Do you think that this new version of Google’s keyword tool will be helpful to your business? Or should Google have left it as it was?

Google Analytics Dashboard Launched

dotCOMreport Editor — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:41:22 +0000

Google has officially launched Google Analytics Status Dashboard. This is good news for those who use services from Google to keep track of your business information. The Google Analytics Status Dashboard allows users to check on the current status of the components they use in Google Analytics, such as Web Report, GData API, and Data Collection.

Now you can check on whether your data from your various sites is being collected by the Google Analytics servers correctly. You will be able to find out if your users are able to view the reports as they are meant to be viewed when they sign into their accounts. You will also be able to see if the APIs are working like they are supposed to.

The dashboard for Google Analytics is very similar to the dashboard for Google Apps. You will be able to see the status for the current day, as well as for the last six days. Exclamation points mean that there is more information available, a red X means that there is a service outage, a wrench is a service disruption, and a green checkmark means that there are no issues.

The new dashboard gives a new layer of transparency that Google believes will be beneficial to all users, from the personal websites to the Fortune 500 companies. Users can check the service availability of their Google Analytics from anywhere in the world. If you want, you can even receive updates via RSS feed.

Everyone who has an online business can benefit from the new service Google is providing. Google Analytics can help affiliate marketers, bloggers, and anyone else who works online.

Do you use Google Analytics and will this be useful for your business? How do you expect to use the new Google Analytics Dashboard in your business?