So, what do you do? Simple. Use a physical mailing address as a contact option in your ‘Contact Us’ page and/or website order form. However, if you’re a website owner that operates from your home, don’t go and attach your home address to your website just yet, you might want to think about your mailing options.

Deciding where to have your business mail sent is not as straightforward as you might think. There are a few factors that you have to take into consideration – quantity of mail received, length of time at location, convenience, and of course, cost. The good news is that you have several options that are available to you:

1. Your Home Address
2. Mailing Services (Mailboxes Etc., The UPS Store, etc.)
3. Mail Forwarding
4. Post Office Box (P.O. Box)

Using your home address:

Using your home address is definitely the cheapest option. To the small to medium size website owners, it is probably the best option. However, if you tend to grow rapidly, or if your website already has a large user-base, then your home address may not be the best option for you.

If you are selling products from your website and allowing customers the option to mail in their order (which is good practice – and many do), then you could potentially get a lot of mail, depending on the user-base of your website, of course. If this is the case, then your home mailman will not be happy with you at this stage! And you may also find yourself spending a half hour out of each day prying your mail out of your tiny home mailbox that is not big enough to accommodate all that mail. Furthermore, if you ever move you will need to forward your mail to your new location, which never seems to be as smooth as you’d like it to be.

Then there’s the fact the all of your customers can easily find out where you live. Not that you’re hiding from anyone! But you could find yourself in the situation where you have a few inquisitive customers that don’t mind “stopping by” to ask a few questions!

Using a Mailing Services (Mailboxes Etc., The UPS Store, etc.):

The use of a mailing service can be quite expensive ($25-$45 per month). However, there are some benefits. You can assign a suite number or have a real street name assigned to your business address, instead of a P.O. box. This can give the potential customer the impression that your business has an office or building that resides at the location. However, I have found that the cost of this service usually outweighs the benefits associated with it. Nevertheless, the money you pay to use a mailing service is tax deductible as a business expense.

Using Mail Forwarding:

Now, if you REALLY want to get fancy you can opt for the mail forwarding option. Here you can pay a company in a “big time” city like New York or Chicago to accept your mail and forward your mail to you. This is EXPENSIVE! And there is another major drawback – you are always getting your mail about 2-5 days late due to the forwarding time.

Using a Post Office Box (P.O. Box):

The use of a P.O. Box is, in my opinion, the best choice for those that run high traffic websites out of their home. Not only does your mail get to the P.O. Box more quickly, but also the cost is relatively cheap (about $50-$125 per year). Again, this cost is a business expense, so save your receipt and write it off!

In my opinion and experience, most people are accustom to the P.O. Box and do not mind sending orders to it. In fact, many big companies use P.O. boxes as a matter of conveniently keeping the mail separate.

There you have it, four good ways to make your customers feel more secure by adding a physical address to your website. Pick the one that suites you and your company’s needs best – everyone is different. The important thing is to give your customers a place to send physical mail.

Good luck! And be sure to come back to visit VictoryKey often for more online business tips and discussions!

The definition

Entrepreneurship is a person (or sometimes a group) which pursues opportunities to satisfy needs and wants using uniqueness and innovation. It’s going after an idea and making it happen.

Some people think an entrepreneur is a business gambler, taking chances on an unproven business or an idea to make money. Sure, entrepreneurs take risks, but they’re calculated ones, not random investments on crazy concepts. The risks entrepreneurs choose are ones determined to have the potential for great return.

The profile

Three factors are the keys to entrepreneurship: opportunities, innovation, and growth.

A person with entrepreneurial aspirations observes environmental trends and changes and pursues unseen opportunities with all possible resources. He or she uses innovative ideas to revolutionize and transform products or services, coping with changing environments.

The entrepreneur is also focused on growth, applying continuous effort to expand their business. Success is the ultimate goal, and creative approaches, such as outsourcing some aspects of the business help to achieve those goals.

The personality

Entrepreneurship involves a desire to be bigger, sell more, and go beyond what is expected. A visionary perspective spurns ideas. Drive and determination push an entrepreneur forward.

Of course, an entrepreneur needs to take some great leaps of faith. They also need to take some incredible risks. But even the largest corporations started out small. Through the calculated strategies of entrepreneurs, small businesses became world leaders.

The landscape

Entrepreneurship happens all around us, in all four corners of the globe. The Internet, though, is the landscape that is buzzing with entrepreneurship right now. It offers new industry possibilities, for those who are motivated to take the chance.

These entrepreneurs drive today’s global business environment. Through calculated risks, they improve the world and profit from it. Stepping out of the comfort zone, they invest in development through technological advancements. They strive for greater heights, providing better products and services to consumers.

Everyone from homemakers to unemployed workers to students are striking it rich because of the opportunities the Internet offers. Many are young, dynamic individuals unafraid of risk and many more are mature people ready to make a change. Avid entrepreneurs in established businesses are realizing the potential the Internet offers, too. Anyone can seize ideas and turn visions into reality. All they have to do is take a chance.

Push Button Marketer – Automation Software For Internet Marketers.

Is it right for you and what you are trying to achieve? That really depends on what your aim is. Obviously you have become an internet marketer to make some money, preferably plenty of it.

Before we go any further, I do suggest that if you are working as an affiliate marketer spreading your net across many niches; don’t bother with a membership site. If your internet marketing efforts are concentrated more in one or maybe two niches then it may be worth considering.

To set up a really successful membership site you need a few things to get started. The first is content. There is no point having a site if there is nothing for people to learn or contribute too, especially if you expect to make money from it (and for internet marketers that is the general idea).

Most sites are set up with a public area, to entice viewers in, and a private paid area, where you start to make your money. The tricky bit here of course is that your public area needs to be attractive enough to bring people in, and your private area needs to offer enough of a quality attraction to make people feel it is worthwhile belonging, and for them to want to stay.

If you genuinely have enough expert knowledge about your particular niche you have a better chance of making your membership site. As the CEO or administrator your following will very simply expect this for your site to have credibility. There is the option too of course of finding another internet marketer to partner with you on the site so you are not carrying this load alone.

It is not an easy task to get a site up and going. You will need the right software and the knowledge to use it, or be prepared to pay for someone who does. Passwords tend to be a particularly tricky area to get right in terms of allowing people into different areas of the site. If you are pretty computer savvy and enjoy a bit of a challenge by all means have a go.

On the other hand, off-page optimization involves link marketing, monitoring your search engine rankings, and paid online advertising. Link building is about building a link neighborhood with other pages or sites with similar content as yours. Having web pages with high page rank to post a link leading to your own page will help boost your page ranking.

Perhaps some of these considerations seem a little off-putting, don’t worry. They are simply that, considerations. Many people are finding that setting up their own membership site is bringing a lucrative and steady income to their internet marketing business. It may well work for you too. Why not do a little more research and decide for yourself?

The first step in getting the business up and running was to add my sales text. I decided to aim initially at the UK market only as that is the one I know and is less competitive than the us. My sales text for the front page aims to do a few things; show that I am UK based, show that people can trust and rely on the site (site looks professional, address is prominent, email and phone numbers are listed, money back guarantee and testimonials from customers) and encourage people to browse the ties knowing that prices are reasonable and shipping is free.

Next priority was to make finding the right tie easier. I did this by creating all sorts of categories; by colour, by style etc. Then was the grinding effort as going into every tie in the catalogue and adding it to various categories. This effort was well worth while however, if people can’t quickly find what they are looking for then they will go elsewhere. It is so easy on the internet to pop into the next shop that you must make it very easy for people. Not only did I categorise every tie in to multiple categories, but I also tagged each tie with a basic description so that the Search box on my site would pull up relevant searches. Finally I selected what I thought were the nicest ties for the featured products on the front.

Final priority was pricing. I wanted the pricing to be competitive and to be easily changed, so that I could experiment and find the best pricing. I also wanted to make it clear to people that prices were much lower for the quality than you would get on the high street. I therefore decided to put high-street retail pricing in and then use a Sale to reduce the price to a competitive internet level. This has worked fairly well, although I think I under-priced initially. Now I am slowly increasing prices and it does not seem to be hurting sales. In pricing I wanted to have progressive quantity discounts to encourage people to buy more silk ties, however the cart system couldn’t handle it. In the website administration it did have bands for price by quantity which I filled in for every product, only to find that it only worked if you bought multiples of the same silk tie. I haven’t yet found a way of doing what I want with the cart, but am glad that I left the volume discounts bulk buying of the same tie in. I get lots of orders for multiples of the same tie from clubs, companies and weddings and having the discounts has definately paid off.

Have a look at the site at www.tiespecialist.com to see the design in action.After a week or so have work every evening and weekend the site was looking good enough to go. I placed a few trial orders for silk ties to make sure everything worked. It didn’t. Test, test and test again until it works great. Finally the moment of truth, I was ready to go live and start getting customers.

Google AdWords has been the biggest expense in getting the business going. To have a successfull internet business you have to get people to come to your site. When you start a high-street shop you have passers by to sell to but when you start a new website you have no passers by. Google does not rank new websites highly so no one will find you by accident. The only way to get visitors quickly is to advertise. I figured that offline advertising wouldn’t be very good, much better to sell to people when they are at their computers already. I also figured that banner ads and listing sites are poor value for money. I therefore focused all my advertising on AdWords first and then Overture.

AdWords is a very clever system. Completely automated, it allows you to advertise to people whoare searching for particular keywords in particular countries. For example for www.tiespecialist.com I want people in the UK who are searching for tie, ties, silk ties, woven silk ties, wedding ties, bow ties, polyester ties etc. The adverts appear on the right hand side of Google and you only pay when someone clicks through. In this way it is better than traditional advertising in that you know you get visitors to your site for your adspend.

How far your ad is from the top depends on how much you are willing to pay and your click through rate (CTR). In essence Google maximises the money making potential of each search by showing the ads people are most likely to click on and that pay the most. When I started my website I put in lots of keywords, wrote an ad and aimed it at the UK. I quickly found that I needed to pay 20p to 35p per click to be in the top 3 for the ads. In the first week of advertising I generated 150 clicks or so per day at 25p each on average and got no sales. After the 1st week sales started to come in at the rate of 1 or 2 per day. When I worked out the cost per conversion I was paying £40 per day for 1 to 2 sales, giving a cost per order of £20 to £40 pounds. The gross margin on an average order is only £10 so I am losing money with every order. This is to be expected at first and I was quite prepared to invest in marketing to get potential customers so that I could improve my website and then build a customer base which would give me long term profitability. However to make pay per click advertising work I needed to do a whole bunch of things:

Cut my cost per click dramatically Improve my conversion rate once people clicked through to my site Increase the average order size I have managed to get the cost per click down to less than 15p per click average by doing a number of things.

First of all I tested lots of keywords to find ones for which there was little competition. For example “how to tie a tie” has no one else advertising on it so I can get traffic for the minimum of 2 pence per click. However the keywords have to be relevant to your product and ultimately convert to sales. I have still found that the vast majority of searches are on the simple keywords; tie, ties so I have to find a way of getting in to that space if I want to get decent numbers of visitors.

Secondly, improve the ads. A great feature of AdWords is that you can run multiple ads simultaneously and track the click through rates of each. Then you get rid of the worst performing ads. The key here is to change one part of your ad at a time (so that you know which change causes the effect) and to wait until you have had least 50 clicks on an ad before making a judgement on it (at low numbers of clicks the performance can fluctuate dramatically with chance). As your ad gets better CTR you get more visitors and a higher ranking so you can reduce the amount per click and still get the same performance. I have improved my average click through from 0.75% when I started to 2.6% by running better ads.

Thirdly, remove poor performing words. You will find that there are some words which are not particularly relevant or have lots of competition, where your clickthrough is low and cost high. I have found it is best to delete them. I have also used negative keywords which allow you to exclude certain words. For example with “tie” I found that some people were searching for “tie fighter” so had “-fighter” in AdWords to exclude these searches. This improves CTR and position.

Fourthly, check out the competition and decide where you need to be in the ranking. For my art website www.artspecialist.co.uk selling oil painting reproductions of masterpieces, I have found that for many words the competition are selling painting courses or prints. Why pay high CTR’s to rank above these companies when potential customers will be scanning past them anyway. I have found it really pays to type each keyword into Google and decide where you need to be to match your competitors. On some words I can be bottom and still be the first company selling oil painting reproductions .

I hope you have found this useful. Read more on my blog at http://specialist-paintings-ties.blogspot.com/. In the next article I will take about conversion rates

UK English woven silk tie business at http://www.tiespecialist.com UK reproduction oil painting business at http://www.artspecialist.co.uk Web marketing and internet entrepreneurship blog at http://specialist-paintings-ties.blogspot.com/

 

<p>Since it was introduced to the world in 1995, the internet has quickly changed the way we live.  Case in point: back in 1994, whoever thought we will be enjoying the latest album of our favourite pop star without having to go to a record shop?  Back in 1994, whoever thought that those voluminous hardbound encyclopedias would be next to obsolete?  Back in 1994, whoever thought that we can keep in touch with friend and relatives many miles away by writing them letters they can receive in a matter of seconds (or even less)?  Back in 1994, whoever thought that terms like downloads, uploads, Skype, Google, MySpace, and NSFW will be invented, and in fact, become accepted parts of our language system?

 

<p>The internet has evolved our lives in so many ways – including how we can make a living.

 

<p>Indeed, there are many, many ways by which one can earn from the World Wide Web.  If you want to learn how to make money online – legal and real money – then read on, dear friend.

 

<p>Below are some opportunities that are perfect for anyone who wants to learn how to make money online:

 

<p>Sell stuff over at eBay.  This is, without a doubt, the easiest way to learn how to make money online.  You can sell anything on eBay, the web’s largest auction site.  With more than 20 million page views per day, eBay is a great venue for whatever you may decide on selling.  Have some extra stuff lying around in the house?  Sell it!  No matter how worthless it may seem for you, it will be worth something for someone else.  Better yet, find a wholesaler who will agree to sell to you his products at wholesale prices without a minimum order and who will only need you as a broker for his marketing campaigns.  Such a wholesaler is called a dropshipper.

 

<p>Sell your own products.  Whether you can create physical or digital products (eBooks, special reports, software programs, etc.), you can sell them on the web via established merchant sites like the aforementioned eBay.com, or via your own website.  You keep all the profit!

 

<p>Sell another merchant’s products for some commission.  If you cannot, or don’t want, to create your own products, you can opt to sell someone else’s products and earn a commission per sale.  This is called affiliate marketing, and it can be one of the most profitable opportunities when you decide to learn how make money online.  For beginners, it is suggested that they join established affiliate networks like ClickBank.com and Shareasale.com to learn the ropes of affiliate marketing.

 

<p>Earn via Pay Per Click (PPC) programs.  Create a website or a blog.  Create an account over at Google AdSense or other PPC programs.  Integrate the user-specific code they will provide.  Drive traffic to your website or blog.  Watch as the PPC program displays contextually relevant ads that will allow you to earn every time a visitor clicks on them.

 

<p>Earn via Cost Per Action (CPA) programs.  The problem with PPC programs is that they only pay miniscule amounts per click.  If you want to earn substantial profit via this business model, you’d have to drive an amazing volume of traffic to your website.  CPA programs are different.  They will ask your visitors to perform a specific action – usually signing up to a mailing list – and they will pay you every time a visitor of yours fulfills such an a required action.  Payouts range from a few cents to as high as $5 per action performed.

 

<p>Sell your services online.  Can you write web content?  Can you write sales pages?  Can you create software programs?  Can you create fantastic graphics?  Can you build websites?  Sell your services via established freelancing websites like Rentacoder.com, Elance.com and Scriptlance.com.  Online freelancing is the new face of telecommuting.

 

<p>These are just some of the more popular ways by which you can learn how to make money online.  There are more, of course, but sticking with the above business models would be enough to guarantee for you some profit.

Becoming involved with PLR products is a great place to start. These type of products allowing you to manage your online home based business in ways that you might not be able to do if you are creating products of your own.

PLR products are private label rights products you can purchase and use any way you want. You can market them anyway you wish, which includes putting your business name on them as well.

Many successful Internet marketers choose to alter their private label right products in various ways that make them unique. Many times this just means changing the way they are packaged.

For example, with products in grocery stores you see this happen all the time. Changing the packaging can improve the image of the product which ultimately is designed to help it sell more. This is generally fairly easy to do and can allow you to quickly be ready to start selling your PLR products and making money from them.

One of the best things about PLR products is a sales page is usually included in the purchase and you can change this to accommodate your personal business. This is a great marketing tool that you can use wherever you like.

You can use any search engine to find many assorted products. The hardest part usually is choosing a product. There are many paid membership sites that offer new private label right products on the monthly basis and many websites that you can join for free as well.

To make money on the internet you may wish to start by finding something that coincides with any business you may already have, or something that you have some knowledge about. This can also help you make a good decision If you believe in a product.

You can start selling these products immediately and there is no reason to wait. You will have everything you need at your fingertips, so there is no delay, you can begin to make money instantly.

You can easily use PLR products to make money on the internet. If you take the time to find a product you really love, you will make a great investment that will propel you into the business world you have always wanted.