95% of all Internet businesses fail sooner or later for many reasons but the main one may be a lack of site visitors or traffic. The simple law of averages means that you should be able to sell to a percentage of the people coming to your website. That said if no one knows you exist, how are they going to buy from you?

Effective Internet Marketing is essential for any website business and it can be a complex, statistical nightmare if you let it. This is where your offline promotional instincts, if they existed, can be quite helpful. You need to promote yourself online just as you would in a brick and mortar business to be successful.

P.T. Barnum would have loved the Internet. Having the nerve and chutzpah to promote online in unique ways, incorporating proven marketing methods with creative instinctual promotion can turn you into a genius overnight. Thinking outside the box is an overused cliché but it makes sense on the Internet because of the abundant opportunities to be creative with advertising and promotion.

Joint ventures with other like minded non- competitive Webpreneurs sharing profits earned. Find someone with a need for your service or products and make a deal to share THEIR traffic through great exposure on their website.

Depending on what you are marketing there are inexpensive, reputable paid traffic options available that will draw targeted traffic to your website. The objective here is branding your business and retaining visitors rather than actually selling first time traffic prospects. Remember that you want to increase your overall exposure to visitors and keep them coming back; allow the law of averages to work for you.

While you are shotgun marketing to build a retained visitor base you can be focusing on other forms of rifled marketing that will earn you revenue to pay the bills comfortable knowing that the law of averages will make you wealthy over time.

Buying a website is a lot like buying a car. Once you decide on the make and model you start adding options and the before you know it your cost has exceeded your budget. This is referred to as feature creep in the website design world and happens to even the most disciplined business person if they aren’t careful.

A little knowledge can be dangerous to your bank account when you have a website. The more you learn about the Internet and all the cool things people are doing online, the more you may want to “cool up” your own website. Marketing a product or service online is tough enough and as you research your competitors and see what THEY are doing it can compel you to get in a no win, feature creep battle that will eat into your profits and time.

When you design your initial website be sure to ask your website developer to make it scalable so you can add features over time without a major structural revamp. This gets expensive, frustrating and will waylay your focus which should be about making money not spending it.

Instead of insisting on the next new whistle or bell, concentrate on your next marketing move. Learn about Internet marketing techniques that don’t require expensive website overhauls. There are numerous inexpensive software applications that can assist you in marketing your business to the masses.

Trust your developer’s instincts when suggesting new modifications to your website. A good website developer will be able to separate your website needs from your desires and won’t encourage you to spend money unnecessarily.

You probably wanted a business website to increase your business earnings or launch new revenue streams so focus on making money. That means honing your Internet marketing skills rather than adding new toys to an already professionally designed website.

Your new online business idea is burning a hole in you and you’ve decided to take the plunge and make it a reality. This can be the best decision of your life or the most time consuming, financial resource disaster you can imagine. Make sure you mitigate your chances of failure by preparing in advance for success.

You first need to ask yourself some important questions and answer them honestly.

• Do I have the time to devote myself fully to the success I’m hoping for?
• Have I put together a business plan or at least structured my online presence on paper?
• How much money are you prepared to invest in this business? A good web designer is worth every cent you pay them and will likely give more effort than they get paid for. It’s the nature of the website designing beast. But the good ones cost money and you’ll need to pay for their top performance.
• How are you planning to advertise your online business? You’ll need eyes on your products and/ or services and with 100′s of millions of web pages out there how will they find you?
• Have you honestly asked yourself who will buy what you have to sell? Who is your target market?
• Are you prepared to tackle the intensive learning curve of Internet marketing and business website ownership?

I will assume you’ve answered these questions in the affirmative and you are ready to jump in feet first …straight into the deep end.

What type of website will you need?

Based on your budget and assuming you’ve done your research you should know what a good website developer will charge you for a completed website or at least an estimate of hours to complete it. Will you need a shopping cart for your website for selling online? Are you just going to be promoting your offline services via the Internet?

There are two main types of websites that are most prevalent online today and they are brochure ware sites and interactive/dynamic websites. Make sure whoever you hire as your website developer understands the latter type, since the former will be simple for them. Which of these two types of website designs will work for you?

Also understand that moving forward with your online business your website will need to be maintained by someone. If your website designer also operates as a website maintenance company they will take care of your long term website maintenance needs or refer you to someone who can do this for you. Now let’s not get confused here.

Website maintenance companies can build a web structure or platform, add new applications and all the bells and whistles for you, even posting your new content for you, but someone needs to keep your overall website content fresh and unique. It’s a rare website designer who will understand your business enough to be able to write your page content for you.

Website developers can’t be all things to all people and every business is different in some respect. You’ll need to provide your website designer with page content as it relates to your business and your online objectives so they can post it live for you. You should ask your website developer about a CMS or Content Management System being a part of your overall website design.

CMS’s were designed to provide a relative novice Internet entrepreneur with a means of updating their online content themselves. These are generally something as simple as an online editor component built into your website system much like MS Word. It allows you to do basic maintenance to your web pages, loading new text copy, graphics and even multi media like photo slideshows, video and audio clips in some cases. Some CMS’s will let you modify your design template or logo/ header to keep your design fresh.

When shopping for a website, speak to a number of website design companies, specifically those that seem professional in their online demeanor. After all, their website design should make an impression on you. Ask to speak to several of their clients and don’t be afraid to ask the web designers ANY questions you have. The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask.

Website maintenance companies you contact should be patient with you and tolerant of your website design naiveté. They should discuss your budget with you and deliver the most value for your financial situation. You should be looking at developing a relationship with your website developer so decide if the company you are considering is going to be a good fit.

It would behoove you to understand how hosting your website works. Your website designer should look after all these hosting details for you but you should also know what you’re paying for. Does your web developer have their own dedicated server? How well is the server maintained? Will there be any website downtime based on their inability to maintain the server themselves? Be sure that your website developer answers these questions confidently and explains them to you.

Finally, be careful about the “Seven dollar per month websites” you can build yourself in an hour. No doubt these websites will give you an online presence but what will you sacrifice in functionality and design and at what cost to your overall business? Your reputation is everything in business and on the Internet your website DEFINES your reputation. The adage “you get what you pay for” was apparently meant for website design.

Hiring a professional website developer to create a spectacular online business portal for your company is probably the best investment you’ll make. Your innovative Internet venture will now be taken seriously. You’ll be able to focus on growing your online business and have the confidence to leave the technical part of your business in the capable hands of your professional website designer.

Every entrepreneur starts out with stars in the eyes, aiming for the sky and wanting the biggest slice of the pie. Positive thinking has its place – provided you have done your homework, figured out the lay of the land and most important of all, know which gap in the market to fill with your new business.

One in a million or one of a million?

Wanting to be everything to everyone is a very common mistake that a lot of businesses make, prompting them to blur into the background, in a market that is awash with millions of others who also tout themselves as generic accountants, lawyers, website designers, medical groups, software solution providers, consultants, retail shops etc.,

Let’s picture this scenario: “We are your one stop shop for marketing solutions. We will help you brand your business, create marketing collateral, design advertisements, generate press releases and provide search engine optimized web content. We have worked with Fortune 500 corporations and small businesses, manufacturers and service providers. No job is too small.”

Why creating a niche is not just important, but absolutely necessary

When I hear this, it brings to mind the room in my house which started out as a play room/library with book shelves and has now become a catch-all filled with all those things you accumulate that you never know what to do with, in addition to book shelves that we can barely access and toys crowded onto every surface.

The irony of being a ‘catch-all’ marketing firm, yet offering branding services to clients seems to be lost on this firm. The part that really makes me want to grab their shoulders and give them a good shake is that last sentence they tacked on – “no job is too small.”

If you were an executive with a major corporation, would you want to give your business to some one who creates marketing material for a one person firm yet has the gall to pitch a proposal to create a multi-million dollar marketing campaign?

Specialize, specialize, specialize!

A niche is an alcove or a ledge in a room where art is displayed to its advantage, rather than fading into the background by being a wallflower. ‘Niching’ is all about choosing that ‘sweet spot’ in the market, that gap that no one has filled, that offers a lot of potential, for which you know you have the capability.

Let’s look at some really famous examples of niche marketing. Meg Ryan is a top ranking Hollywood star. But when you think of her, you automatically associate the word ‘sweet’ with her. Sweet is her niche. Serious roles will be given to Jody Foster maybe (also a niche) but the soft, romantic ones which need a cute little pixie will go to Meg Ryan.

We associate FedEx with overnight couriers. Seven Up is the un-cola, the ‘cool’ drink in a market with two titans, Pepsi and Coke. The strong branding efforts of these companies focused on differentiating themselves from the rest of the pack and making a name within that niche. Does that mean that FedEx only ships overnight packages? In fact, as a result of creating such a strong niche that people don’t say the word courier any more, it’s always “let’s FedEx it”, the company gets plenty of business in ground shipping as well.

Don’t be afraid of limiting yourself with a niche

Creating a niche is the key to opening up a whole new world of business opportunities. Choose a niche, specialize in serving a specific industry – and watch as the reputation you create in that niche snowballs into opportunities in other areas.

Paul and Sarah Edwards, in their best selling book ‘Getting business to come to you’ talk about this Russian immigrant who spoke several languages. She started a translation service, offering multiple languages. Months later, she still had little business, despite signing up several other translators who spoke languages that she did not know and spending every free minute on marketing her umbrella of translation services.

The associates she had lined up were getting work from a competitor who specialized in Spanish. She shelved the idea of umbrella service and offered just Russian, her forte. Pretty soon, business was booming and she was referring clients to associates because she was too busy. The ironical post script to this story is that one of the first questions new clients ask her is whether she also does other languages, in addition to Russian. So she gets ‘spill-over’ opportunities in additional languages, while carving a niche as a Russian translator.

Stand apart from the crowd

Creating a niche helps you stand apart, differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack and be at the top of people’s minds in terms of recall. Phone books are filled with CPAs offering pretty much the same service. But the savvy accountant whose byline says ‘serving medical practitioners’ is sure to stand apart and be easy to remember when tax time rolls around, because that is her niche.

With the boom in web content, the online marketplace is as crowded as the brick and mortar world. Every business, be it a consulting firm, a chocolate shop or realty service wants optimized web content that presents their best face on the world stage. A web designer who promises the world while being a generalist will hardly be able to deliver on that promise, as opposed to some one who specializes in a niche, such as creating web sites for online retailers or new businesses.

Specializing goes hand in hand with Expertise

When you specialize in a specific market, you gain familiarity with that market. Inside knowledge leads to expertise in that area over time. This is why potential clients will come knocking – because of your implied expertise in that field.

So a rancher looking for an accountant to make sense out of his tangled paperwork would rather go to the CPA who specializes in accounting services for local ranchers as opposed to the newly minted CPA who pitches his service across the board to local retailers, law firms, restaurants and ranchers.

A web site designer who regularly works with start ups will be familiar with many issues confronting new entrepreneurs and bring familiarity with the kind of web templates that would work for specific businesses, as opposed to a design shop which may be good at graphics and design but know very little that is specific to the challenges facing small businesses.

Infinite Benefits

Creating a niche for your business and tailoring your product or service for a specific market or industry will eventually bring you constant business as well as a strong reputation or brand image. To supplement revenue, rather than branching out and spreading yourself thin, offer complimentary services that add to the main niche product or service you offer.

As a writer, I specialize in writing business articles for clients and the media. But this alone will not provide a steady year round income. Rather than throw myself out there, offering to write children’s books and ad copy, I write business profiles, provide web content, draft press releases, and create sales literature for firms in specific industries. Since all of this is linked to my knowledge of their business and their target market, it is a logical extension of my business writing, rather than offering ‘any and every kind of writing’!!!

So perform a thorough survey of the market, choose your sweet spot, ensure that it is something you like, tailor your product or service and begin carving your very own niche.

Padma Nagappan is a business communications writer. Visit her web profile at http://www.ifreelance.com/pro/31377

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