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Keywords and phrases
Have you developed the
key words and phrases that will ensure good placement in the search engines?
Remember, you can
think up keywords yourself, you can see which key words your competitors are
using, or you can simply pay a specialist company to find them for you. Once
you’ve submitted your site to the search engines in all the keyword
categories you want, it’s crucial to monitor your traffic carefully.
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Optimization
Have you identified
what you need to do to ensure that your site is fully optimized? Do you have
the means or resources to effectively complete the task?
Once you’ve figured
out the keywords, you have to decide where to put them and how. You also have
think about link exchanges to improve your ranking even more. Remember, the
more sites link to you, the higher your position in the search engines.
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Content
Have you developed
content that is not only attractive to your potential clients, but also search
engine friendly? Do you have
content and tools other than your main text that will assist with search
engine ranking and drive visitors to your site?
Content has to contain
persuasive sales text with a fine scattering of crucial keywords. You also
have to update it as often as necessary—not so often that it gets in the way
of your business, but often enough to keep fresh traffic pouring in and the
site interesting and attractive.
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Traffic and promotion plan
Do you have a plan for
promoting your site and driving traffic to it?
There are all sorts of
ways you can bring traffic to your site. In this book, I mention just a few of
them—the ones that I’ve found the most effective. When you set up your
Internet business, you should have your entire promotion campaign planned out
in your mind. You should know which methods you want to use, and what to do if
they don’t yield the results you want in the time you want.
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Target Market
Have you identified
your target market? Do you know
how to reach them? Do you know
what they want? Do you know how
to attract them?
The more finely you
target your marketing, the greater your sales rate will be and the higher your
profits. Those high profits begin with a clear understanding of who your ideal
audience is. Make sure you know your market before you even build your site,
and keep it in mind as you prepare your promotions.
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Time
Are you prepared to
put in the time required to make your site a success? When the site launches, will you be ready to roll?
The biggest investment
of time comes before the site is launched and in the period immediately after
it launches. First, you have to do all the research. You have to understand
how you’re going to break into your market, and know exactly what you want
your online business to do. Once your first sites are built and launched, you
have to do all the marketing. Only once it’s up and running will you be able
to relax, move into monitor mode and begin thinking about your next
opportunity. How long that takes depends on how much time you invest at the
beginning and how successful your marketing efforts are. It usually takes a
few months.
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Advertisers and Affiliates
Have you identified
advertisers and affiliates who will promote your site, your products and your
services?
You can start looking
for advertising opportunities and affiliate programs before you even launch
your site. The more prepared you are when you launch, the quicker you’ll be
able to move from inception to income.
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Opt-In Email
Have you
identified features for your site that will build a marketable opt-in email
list? Have you though about what
you’re going to put on your pop up and how you’re going to manage the list
when you get it.
The people
on your opt-in email list are like a little pool of potential customers—and
repeat customers. The more people you can bombard with your marketing
material, the more money you’re going to make. Ways to trap email addresses
should form a part of your site design.
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Monitoring
Have you identified
monitoring features for your site that will provide you with information about
your target market? Do you have a
way of knowing who has visited your site?
Do you have a method of collecting data from your visitors to help you
improve your site?
The Internet changes
constantly. One week, you can have top rankings and a sales rate to die for;
the next week, your site be down on page fifteen with traffic made up of
spam from Romania. You have to keep track of your traffic, and be
prepared to make changes to your marketing plan.
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Joint Ventures
Do you have an idea
who you could partner with to offer complementary services that bring real
benefits to you, your partner and your users?
Joint ventures are
your partnerships for success. They allow you to pool resources with other
entrepreneurs to bring real benefits for all of you. Start by talking to the
people who send the newsletters you like to read each week. Then move out into
people who provide complementary services to the ones you offer. As you build
up your business, keep your eye open for new opportunities all the time.
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Vision
Do you
know what you want to achieve and what you’ll do when you get there?
If your goal is only to make money, you can achieve that
in your first week on the Web. Most of us have bigger goals than that though.
Whether you want to be the Bill Gates of online marketing or simply set up an
automated revenue stream that will bring in a constant flow of cash with very
little maintenance, you can do all that on the Internet—as long as you know
what you want.
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