I suggest you print this checklist and keep it at your desk. As you accomplish each item in the list, you’ll see your profits steadily increase. Before you know it you’ll be earning a full time income from the web!

On with the checklist. Remember, you do not have to do these all at once. Work your way through the list one step at a time. Once you have every item on this list, you should really be seeing some steadily growing profits…

A website with your own domain name
A professional-looking website is a must in order to make a go of an online business. A domain name at a mere ten bucks or so a year tells potential customers you’re serious about business. As for the site itself, you can create it with a website template and a free html editor if you’re handy with the computer. If you’re not, you can have your pre-designed template customized by professional “template tuners”.

Proprietary products and services
The best way to the highest profits is to offer at least one product or service that you own the rights to. Either create something that the market demands or purchase exclusive rights to something. This is an area that stumps many people but if you use your imagination and draw on your past experiences, job and even hobbies, you may be able to come up with something. As you consider ideas, you can do a little keyword research and see if anyone is searching the web for that topic. This will tell you if there is an interest in your subject.

A merchant account and secure credit card ordering
In order to make a serious income online, you MUST be able to securely accept credit card orders. You can do it with a merchant account of your own, or use a service like 2Checkout or Paypal. Or, if your product is digital, you can use a service like Clickbank.

Effective sales literature
While a professional website and a great product are important to your success, every business expert agrees on one thing… it is the marketing that will make or break your business. The web is filled with superb websites containing outstanding products and services, that never make a profit. An effectively written sales letter could make the difference for many of those site but the owners simply do not realize that. If you are not versed in writing sales copy for the web, get a book on it or hire a professional, proven copywriter to do it for you.

Website traffic
Obviously you’ll need website traffic before you can start making any money. There are tons of ways to get traffic without paying much, if any money. Some of the best strategies I’ve used include free traffic networks, search engines, link swaps, affiliate programs and article/content sharing. All these grass roots strategies can bring targeted traffic, often at no cost. If you want more details on these strategies, you’ll find them in last week’s BizWeb eGazette.

Your own opt-in list
Growing an opt-in email list is absolutely essential to your long-term success online. The best way to grow a list is by giving away something of value such as a free ebook, email course or even a newsletter. A combination of all three works best for me, as it has grown my list to more than 150,000 subscribers. Your list will be your bread and butter. Not only can you use it to form relationships with your potential clients, you will be able to announce new products and services and affiliate products and services.

Great customer support
You’ll need to find a way to help your clients one on one. If you can do it yourself, that’s a great way in the beginning. Eventually you should consider using a virtual assistant or a help desk so you can concentrate on other business aspects such as marketing.

An affiliate program
Call it what you want — an affiliate, associate or reseller program. Your site needs one! This allows other businesses to refer customers to your site and earn money. In turn, your marketing efforts are multiplied over and over. It’s like hiring a giant sales force and paying them only when they make sales!

Joint venture partners
Having an affiliate program in place is only the beginning. You need to fill that affiliate program database with super-affiliates! You can do that by regularly contacting potential partners and “making deals” with them. You promote their product or service and they promote yours. Give them a complimentary copy of your product and offer them a special commission rate. Let them know you will reciprocate their efforts. Joint ventures are a two way street and there are an unlimited number of potential JV partners out there. Never stop looking!

Add-on products and services
You should regularly offer your customers products and services related to your own. Your best bet is to offer the products and services of your affiliates, as it is a great way to return the “favor” and create lasting business relationships. Also try to mix in products that create residual income for your company, such as web hosting services or software.

There you have it — a checklist of web business essentials. I suggest all newbies print this checklist and keep it at their desk. As you accomplish each item in the list, your business will be growing right along with your bank account balance!

* Article used with permission from JDD Publishing’s Internet marketing site. Their website marketing guide and internet marketing new show you how to grow a business on the Internet.

Note: JDD Publishing affiliates are invited to replace live byline links with their affiliate links. Affiliate links can be attained by downloading this special work at home report.

Five things many Search Engine Optimization firms won’t tell you — but that you need to know before you spend a dime.

So, you want your website to rank high on Google and other search engines. To do that, you’re planning on hiring a search engine optimization (SEO) firm. Good move — maybe.

A good SEO firm can help make your rankings and sales skyrocket. That’s the good news. The bad news is there are a lot of SEO firms out there that will charge you big bucks without delivering results.

As someone in the SEO business myself, I’ve heard countless horror stories about people who have gotten ripped off by paying for services they didn’t need, or simply not understanding what their SEO firm is supposed to be doing on their behalf.

Below are some of the truths of the SEO industry many firms will never tell you. Knowing these insider secrets can save you thousands of dollars and many hours of frustration.

1. Most SEO work follows the 80/20 rule.

In other words, 20% of the work will account for 80% of the results. If that’s true (and believe me, from personal experience I know that it is), you should make sure that the fee structure reflects this. Ask for an itemized quote, so you can make sure that you aren’t paying too much for the other 80%.

For example, a lot of SEO experts will tell you they’re going to spend X number of hours tweaking your site’s keywords and meta tags, but there’s really no hard evidence that those techniques have a significant impact on your rankings. Doing simple things like making sure your page structure is “search engine friendly” (ensuring all your pages can be indexed by search engines) is infinitely more important.

As part of a comprehensive SEO strategy, you still want the other 80%, but you want to make sure that the bulk of the priority (and cost) is focused the effort that will produce the most results.

2. You CAN receive a guarantee.

Many big SEO firms say to watch out for anyone who guarantees results. They’ll tell you most places that do so are nothing but scam artists.

Here’s the truth: I can absolutely guarantee I can get any business ranked in the top 10 on Google for any keyword you choose. It all depends on how much money you’re willing to spend and how long you’re willing to wait for the results. If an SEO firm is confident in their ability to improve your rankings, why wouldn’t they offer you a guarantee?

3. You CAN see immediate results.

Most SEO firms will try to tell you it takes months to see tangible results. Wrong.

In fact, it’s often possible to see results within a week, depending on the keywords you’re targeting. I know because I’ve accomplished this for my clients time and time again. Unless you’re going after extremely competitive keywords, if the SEO firm bidding for your business says it will take three months to accomplish anything, they’re probably just looking to sign you up for a lucrative long-term retainer.

4. SEO work is NOT too complicated to explain in detail.

Too many SEO experts will balk if you ask them to explain in detail the work they’re going to do for you. But don’t let them off the hook. While some strategies may indeed be technical, most of the techniques are easily explained — especially some of the most important ones (see point #1 above about the 80/20 rule).

If you’re going to pay someone a lot of money to work for you, you deserve and explanation of exactly what they’re going to do.

5. The greatest factor in SEO has NOTHING to do with your web site.

In my research, I’ve found that around 80% of the Google ranking factors have nothing to do with the web site itself. The real determining factors are links to your site from other web sites.

As long as your site is easily crawled by Google, most of the energy should be focused on getting these outside links. If an SEO firm tries to sell you an expensive package to simply “optimize” your site for Google, it’s probably going to cost you a lot of money for very little result.

* Article used with permission from JDD Publishing’s Internet marketing site. Their website marketing guide and internet marketing news help you grow a business on the Internet.

Note: JDD Publishing affiliates are invited to replace live byline links with their affiliate links. Affiliate links can be attained by downloading this special work at home report.

Today I want to share with you the 10 most common myths that are keeping people from earning their slice of the Internet cash pie.Without a doubt, one or more of the following online business myths, reside in nearly every potential business person’s head, while they contemplate starting their own Internet income stream.

Here are the myths, exposed and shattered…

Myth #1: I’m not smart enough to have my own business.

Perhaps. But doubtful. True, online business is NOT for everyone. But I do feel that it IS doable for ALMOST ANYONE, including 99% of the people reading this newsletter right now. If you have an average level of intelligence and a desire to learn, you can grow an income stream from the web. You just have to do it the right way, and that means you CANNOT chase business opportunity after business opportunity. You have to build something of YOUR OWN. Something of VALUE. Something that will help other people. It’s all about sharing something with other people. That’s the seed that can blossom into profits via affiliate programs, your own products or services, advertising revenue and many other income streams.

Myth #2: I don’t have the time it takes to start or grow an income source online.

Working for “the man” can eat up quite a bit of your time. Add in a significant other, maybe a family, a commute and what do you have left? For people working 80+ hours a week to make ends meet, starting a business MAY be impossible. But for most folks working full time jobs, it IS possible. I worked 40-50 hours a week plus I had a 2 hr. a day commute 10 years ago. I had a significant other and a baby on the way. But I found a couple hours a night to get a business started. I used my commute time to record ideas onto a small cassette recorder. I brainstormed during idle times in the day. If you want something bad enough, there is almost ALWAYS enough time to make it happen. Burn the midnight oil for a few months and see what happens.

Myth #3: I don’t have the money it takes for a new business.

That’s doubtful. The cost of online business really can be dirt-cheap. Ten years ago it was FAR more expensive to start a business online than it is today. Website design no longer costs thousands of dollars. In fact, you can do it for less than $50 if you are willing to do the work yourself. Even if you have to hire someone you can have a pre-designed website template modified for a few hundred bucks. There are also monthly services available for the cost of dinner out, that handle all your needs such as web hosting, growing an opt-in list, following up with prospects, accepting orders and even starting an affiliate program. None of these services were available ten years ago. Now they are cheap and more effective than ever.

Myth #4: I’m not an expert at anything.

You don’t have to be. I was a phone guy. I decided I wanted to start a business on the Internet and started researching every aspect of it. Before I knew it, I knew more about the subject than everyone I knew. People started asking me questions and it soon dawned on me that I was now an “expert” on Internet business. So I decided to help more people by writing a book. The point is, you can BECOME an expert in almost any topic that interests you. The world wide web contains a WORLD of information and it is all at your fingertips. Take a topic that gets you excited and BECOME an expert. It’s fun to enrich your mind and even more fun to enlighten the minds of others!

Myth #5: I have nothing to sell.

You don’t need anything to sell right away. You can start by promoting existing products and services in the niche you choose. Chances are you will not be the first person entering that niche. And chances are there are already products or services for sale in that arena. You can promote those existing products or services on a commission basis, via those merchants’ affiliate programs. While you’re doing that you can be developing something of your own to sell!

Myth #6: Someone is already doing what I want to do so it is useless trying to compete.

This is one of the worst excuses, yet one of the most common I see. Many people think that if an idea is already being implemented online, that they “missed the boat”. What they fail to realize is that if their idea is being done, then it may be a successful idea, and something worth pursuing! Remember, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of sites doing similar things on the web. Heck, if I had this attitude ten years ago I would still be working for the man. After all, I’m not the first guy to come along offering business advice.

Myth #7: The only people making money are people telling others how to make money.

Another one I hear a lot — usually from someone too lazy to ever succeed. Sure, there are a lot of so-called web business gurus offering advice on how to make money online. But in the grand scheme of things, these businesses comprise FAR less than 1% of ALL businesses online. Your business online is what YOU want it to be — always remember that. If you want to be an online business guru, do your research and join the fray. But only do it if that is what you truly want to do, not because it looks like the only way.

Myth #8: I’ve tried plenty of business opportunities with no success — it’s just not for me.

Maybe it’s not. But chances are, your failure is from chasing different business opportunities, instead of building your own business from the ground up. That includes setting up a website of your own, growing your own opt-in list, communicating with and helping people, networking with other businesses in your niche and MAKING it happen!

Myth #9: I’d need a top search engine ranking to get anywhere and that’s almost impossible.

I’ll agree that it MAY be almost impossible to get a top search engine ranking in some niches. But the fact is, you do NOT need a top search engine ranking in order to succeed on the web. I’ll submit right now in writing, that a top search engine ranking can be grossly overrated. In fact, I have a site that has a top ranking in a hotly contested market, with THE top keywords. How much traffic do you think that top ranking brings the site each month? 10,000 visitors? 5,000 visitors? Try 300. Yes, search engine ranking, like ALL marketing strategies online and off, does NOT stand up well on its own. Effective marketing is all about using MULTIPLE strategies, and many strategies work FAR better than search engine positioning.

Myth #10: I’d need a big advertising budget to get any results.

Wrong. The web is a PERFECT medium for implementing grass-roots strategies. A few that I’ve used with great success include joint venturing, networking, opt-in marketing such as email newsletters and email follow-up series’, commission-only marketing such as ebay and affiliate programs, ad co-ops, and more. These strategies are dirt-cheap and amazingly effective. In fact, BEFORE the web you could get away with the argument that a big advertising budget was needed to grow a business. The web changed that long ago and it continues to be true today.

There you have it. The top 10 Myths about Web Business that are keeping literally millions of people stuck in that J-O-B (Just Over Broke). If you’re not on your way to generating profits online, you may find that you believe one of those myths. Don’t fall for it. Don’t let a false belief keep you from one of the best opportunities in centuries — an online business of your OWN. There really is no lifestyle like it!

* Article used with permission from JDD Publishing’s Internet marketing site. Their website marketing guide and internet marketing news help you grow a business on the Internet.

Note: JDD Publishing affiliates are invited to replace live byline links with their affiliate links. Affiliate links can be attained by downloading this special work at home report.