#1
What are you going to sell? Perhaps you already have a product.
If so skip to the next step. If you plan to sell only as an affiliate,
check out the many listings of merchants and products at Commission
Junction .
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| #2
Get a domain name -- as
low as $13.50 per name per year. You will also need a Web
host. There are plenty of hosting options but cheapest isn't always
the best. A reliable host means your site is up 99.9% of the time.
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| #3
Build your site to sell. One of the best tools for creating Web
pages that turn visitors into buyers is SiteSell
. I bought their low priced 800 + page guide and found it
to be the most effective information out there on setting up your
site to make sales. |
| #4
Get a merchant
account and a shopping cart on a secure server. You should
also have a toll free number (click
here for 4.9 cent rate) for taking phone orders -- not everyone
will buy online (yet). I put my toll free number on the shopping
cart pages and pick up several extra sales a week. Create a mail/fax
order form for those who won't call, or buy online. |
| #5 Set up your
site so that visitors will give you their email address. Create
your own email newsletter. Once you start accumulating emails,
you can use software to automate
scheduled email announcements and special promotions.
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| #6 Create autoresponders
to handle routine replies and for delivery of special reports
and announcements. Most hosts provide some autoresponders along
with your service, but if not, do a search and you'll find several
providers. |
| #7 Choose keywords
that relate to your product(s). However, don't rely on your imagination.
Use Wordtracker
to research the exact phrases and keywords being used every day
by millions of searchers. This service also gives you hundreds
of related terms to research. |
| #8 Optimize your
Web pages around popular keywords to rank high in results pages
at the most important search engines. Install
tracking code into your pages so you'll know how many visitors
you get, where they come from, which keywords they used to find
you and much more. I use WebPosition
to do all of these tasks with ease. You can get a 30 day free
trial so there's nothing to lose and much to gain. My pages rank
in the top 5 positions -- many number 1 -- for the major search
engines because of this program. |
| #9
Get ready to publish and announce your site to the search
engines. But first, go through your site -- better yet, get a
couple of friends to click through -- and check for broken links,
non-loading graphics, misspellings, and shopping cart functions.
Make sure everything works before submitting to search engines.
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| #10
Submit your site pages by hand or use WebPosition
which emulates hand submission. Most other submission software
is often detected by search engines as attempts to spam and they
simply discard those submissions. Don't be taken in by services
who claim to submit your site to hundreds of search engines for
a fee. There are only about a dozen or less major engines. The
rest simply harvest your email address in order to send you their
bulk email offers. |
| #11
Seek links from other sites with related content. It's not as
hard as you think. One of my sites has almost 400 links coming
in. You can use a free software like Zeus
to automate the link building process. The more links coming to
your site, the more popular and relevant your site is considered
by search engines which are increasingly putting more emphasis
on popularity as a criteria for high ranking pages. |
#12 Use
additional avenues to market your products and promote your site.
Join discussion groups. Post your items for sale at online auctions
like ebay.com .
Become an expert in your field and list yourself available for
questions at the major
expert sites. All of these venues provide opportunities for
personal follow up with qualified leads. |
| #13
Configure your shopping cart to up-sell related products. Cross-sell
products from other companies through their affiliate programs.
See Commission
Junction
for hundreds of merchants and thousands of products.
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| #14
Set up your own affiliate program
to develop a sales force who will increase your sales by many
times. For a list of affiliate management software providers,
see AssociatePrograms.com.
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| #15
Track and measure your results. Testing various promotions costs
you little so try different approaches, always measuring and recording
your results so you will know what to do next. My
tracking service tells me how many unique visitors see my
site per day, how long they linger on a page, how they navigate
through my pages, where they came from and what keywords they
used to find me -- and that's just a partial list of statistics
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| #16
Test, test, test. If something doesn't work, don't give up --
try a different approach. My first site was up for 6 months before
the first order came through the shopping cart. Now my 8 sites
generate 20,000 to 30,000 visitors monthly (and climbing) who
buy between $4,000 and $8,000 monthly (and rising) in sales. It's
fun and I get to work at home, choosing my own hours, making my
own decisions. |
