Digital Trend Blog

Type ecommerce shopping cart on the internet and you'll get billions of search results. It can be really confusing, I agree. If you let the jargon get to you, you can easily get confused with the ecommerce shopping cart. We'll don't be. I'm not saying that it's easy but it should not be that confusing, to say the least.

No question about it, having a dedicated shopping cart on your website is very significant. It can have huge impacts on your marketing and sales. It affects the way you manage your products. It will change the way you generate sales reports. It will give you news perspectives and open up new opportunities and increase potential market base. An online shopping cart is the next best thing for a commercial website like yours.

Want an edge over 95% of the affiliate marketers on the web? Get a domain name. A domain name is like setting up an address for people to stop by and do business with you.

1. Professional appearance.
Really, which website are you more inclined to click:

http://www.mypowermall.com/Biz/Home/555555 or http://www.onlinesavingsforyou.com?

The first one reeks of “cookie cutter” or replicated websites and there are thousands of others out there EXACTLY like it. The second one shows independence and singularity. For this example, hundreds of thousands of people have clicked on a Power Mall website. The chance of click-through to your affilitate generated website is slim and getting slimmer every time another signs up for this opportunity. More people will click on the second because it is something they have not seen before. You move from the crowd promoting the cookie cutter website to standing apart and representing yourself as your own business.

There is a lot of buzz going round about web 2.0. The big boys of the internet are already on it and we all know it’s the next big thing. As a matter of fact small online businesses have already started experimenting on it.

With all the excitement building up to the possibilities of web 2.0, the challenge though lies in this simple but confounding question.

How can small online business web sites utilize content 2.0 to grow and expand their core business without loosing focus or burning their resources?

To allude to that question, here are three guiding principles.

Plan, don’ t rush:

This article is about ways to grow an ebay business. These are tips for the seller who already knows the basics and is looking for tips to build their business.

Quite a few ebay entrepreneurs use trial and error as a tool for success. Don’t be afraid to try something new. When you have been using ebay auctions for a while you will learn what sells well and what doesn’t. When listing on ebay, don’t list the same product time and again. Before you use any of the more advanced options on ebay, try new products at regular auctions. This will give you an idea of how well they will sell and how popular they will be.

If you don’t have a library near you and have Internet access, you can find plenty of public domain information online if you just know where to look.

One word of caution though, and this is very important. If you go to a site online that claims to have public domain works or information and the title of the site is “Joe’s Little Odds And Ends” you might want to be careful about accepting what Joe has to say about what may or may not be a public domain work. No offense to Joe, but you just have no way of knowing if he is an expert. This is why, in this series, I am not going to give you any list on public domain works, because I am NO expert on this. Copyright notices lapse and are applied for all the time and there is no way anybody can keep up with it on a daily basis. That’s why, if you want to find out if something is public domain or not, you go right to the sources. And there are several reputable ones.

One of the easiest things to do with public domain material is to simply make a collection of works. It is best to deal with works that are short, such as poems and short stories. There are several directions that you can go with this. I will give you a few suggestions here. Mind you, these are not the be all and end all. They are just a few of the many things you can do.

The first thing is to go with the most popular public domain poet or author that you can find. Take their most famous works, probably about 8 to 12, and put them into a book. Will there be other books out there with these collections? Probably, but at least you know there will be a demand for them. To get your share of the pie, simply use the advertising methods I’ve outlined in previous articles and get the word out. You’ll make your share of sales with hard work.

One of the best ways to take your scrapbook business to the next level is to incorporate audio. Audio is an excellent way to get personal with your customers. You can do this in several ways:

Classes – Create a series of audio classes. You can plan your classes and offer them online to your customers. You might then make these free to your subscribers, or place them on your scrapbook business website as purchasable downloads. If you sell these audios, you should include printable pages, like transcripts and sample page layouts.

Interviews - Interviews are tons of fun. Plus, you get to pick the brain of someone you admire in the scrapbook business. Line up interviews with book authors, famous scrappers, and other scrapbooking related topics. Record your interviews and place them on your website for your visitors to listen to.

More and more people are reporting that they have spent
substantial amounts of money for an online business and
received far too little in return.

Has that been your experience?

I’ve been there. Like you, I’ve spent countless hours -
often in the middle of the night (my boss *loved* the
bags under my eyes the next day!) looking for the right
business.

Perhaps like you, I found several that looked and
sounded good enough for me to plunk down my hard earned
cash.

And it WAS hard earned! You know what I mean.

And then it happened — that deafening sound of…
nothing!

That’s right - I got NOTHING real for my money. Oh
sure, I could access some website and read until my
eyes fell out of my head.

One of the most often repeated questions from online business owners is - “How can you get more traffic to your website?”

The first thing I would ask you is - “Do you really know what web site traffic sources are working or not working for you?”

Are you tracking your website traffic through your these steps in your sales funnel?

• Unique Traffic Sources
• Unique Visitors within each Source
• Conversion to Subscribers
• Total Subscribers
• Follow-up Emails Opened
• Follow-up Emails Clicked Thru
• Broadcast Emails Opened
• Broadcast Emails Clicked Thru
• Conversion of Subs to First Sale
• Total 1st Buyers
• Conversion of 1st Buyer to Priority Buyer
• Total Priority Buyers
• Total Revenue

One of the benefits of most auto responders (I use aweber) is the ability to track unique traffic sources. By creating separate web opt in forms and web pages for each unique traffic source you will be able to track initial traffic from your various sources, conversion to subs, total subscribers directly.

Be honest, how many places do you ever really remember online? Most people remember only a fraction of the websites that they eventually visit. However, this is an awful occurrence for someone who is running a business that has an online presence. This online presence is very important to ensure that things are running properly, and that customers are coming back to help build repeat business and profits.

If you have a website and online presence, that is not gathering some good attention then you are essentially destined to close quite quickly. It is very important to grab the proverbial bull by the horns and ensure that you are creating a good, powerful, and strong online presence that drives repeat business to your website. The trick is to do this without spamming, or making your site appear desperate.