The most basic question any Internet business owner will have to answer at one point or anotherwhat should I sell.
After the settling down of the dot-com bubble, sanity checks have brought realistic expectations to the fore. Initially, a backlash was seen, forecasting the doom of the Internet. Finally, merits have made the Internet gain its rightful place. In breakthroughs that show the promise of e-commerce wasnt all smoke and mirrors, four dot-coms recently reported their first quarterly profits.
The list of the Internets publicly held moneymakers includes eBay Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services Inc., Expedia Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc. Several privately owned dot-coms, including search engines Google and DealTime, say they have been making money, too.
Should you be selling a product or a service
The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain, educate and research. It is thus no wonder that nonperishable, information-intensive products - including computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics, magazine subscriptions - are the most popular online products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet.
Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and investments have successfully translated themselves to the Internet.
Unique services such as Online driving schools have been prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses, such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.
However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give lots of preliminary information thats useful in setting the scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place offline - i.e., not on the Internet.
Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best on the Internet are those that take advantage of the convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.
Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus, few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can and do sell on the Net.
Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people from buying online more than any other single reason. An Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with credit cards being stolen.
As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages as well as disadvantages of selling either products or services. However, in the recent past, online services have known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell products you need to rethink your product offering if the total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than what is offered elsewhere.
Take some time to evaluate your products or services. There is a growing market of potential customers on the Internet, you just need to offer the products and services they are looking for.
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In search of the coveted search engine traffic Yes Then dont ignore your meta tags. If anyone tells you that meta tags are not important, they are seriously misinformed. Follow these simple rules and the clicks will come. Skip them and the high search engine rankings that you work so hard for will never deliver on the true traffic potential.
Imagine that you check your incoming email and there are two messages waiting for you. You look at the summary information for each and they appear as follows:
MESSAGE #1:
From: unknownperson@obscuredomain.com
Subject: iaviq qiegaie aeiapih
MESSAGE #2:
From: your-favorite-guru@gurusite.com
Subject: An insider shortcut guide to creating sensational ads
If youre interested in how to write killer ads, which message gets opened and which goes in the trash Its obvious I know, but its relevant.
Test the search engine results for one of your website pages and heres what youll find...
The search engine results pages (SERPs) for the big 4 search engines (Google, Yahoo, Altavista and MSN) display information to their users by spidering your web pages and grabbing the text from various areas. When someone conducts a search and sees your web page in the results, heres what you can expect them to see:
GOOGLE: Your title tag Your description meta tag***********
YAHOO!: Your title tag Your description meta tag Text from the upper area of your web page
***********
ALTAVISTA: Your title tag Your description meta tag Text from the upper area of your web page
***********
MSN: Your title tag Text from the upper area of your web page
Do you see the parallel between your web pages title tag and description meta tag in comparison to the from address and subject line in our email analogy above The copy that you use in these tags becomes your advertisement to the world when your pages are displayed in search results.
Since each of the top 4 search engines display your title tag first, take some time and think through what you want people to see. Offer benefits. Offer a solution. And when you write the copy for your title tag, use your targeted keyword / phrase at the beginning of the title statement. Search engines place a high value on the title tag.
Your description tag (used by Google, Yahoo and Altavista) should serve as your call to action. Write your description in such a way that it compliments the title tag and motivates the searcher to click through to your site for the answers to their specific problem or need. Your targeted keyword phrase should be included once but not at the very beginning of the description.
How important is it that your website name be included in the title tag or description meta tag You can draw your own conclusions, but in my view its not important. The link to your website will show people where theyre going from the SERPs, and after landing on your site the URL in their browser along with your sites branding will help them remember where theyve landed.
Dont shortcut or poo-poo your sites title tags and description meta tags. When the day comes that youre ranked number one in your niche (and you will be), make sure that Google, Yahoo, Altavista and MSN display the information that will motivate searchers to click though to your site instead of the site listed just below you. Its your traffic. You earned it.
Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton
Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to GoThrive Online, for Free Video Tutorials for Internet Marketing and big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. Free Video Tutorial Archives Here: