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To generate an online in income, you must invite eager prospects to your website. Without visitors to your website, you have no business.

Inviting prospects to your website is known by many names (driving traffic, sponsoring, lead generation, referring, etc.), whatever you call that process, you are simply bringing prospects to your website.

You can generate targeted traffic, or generic traffic. In most cases, you’ll want targeted traffic . . . people who are specifically interested in what you have to offer.

You can utilize many methods in generating website traffic, namely classified ads, email marketing, articles and press releases, pay per click advertising, funded sponsoring, purchase leads, joint ventures, and forum and social networds to list a few.

You can utilize some of these methods for free, others have an associated cost.

One method will even generate an income for you while generating traffic. That method is called funded sponsoring. In utilizing the funded sponsoring method, you can offset other costs associated with traffic generation.

For the most part, article marketing is free, targeted traffic. Simply write short articles about your product or business, with links to your website embedded in the article, then post your articles to numerous article directories.

Webmasters will then choose your article from the directories and post to their website. Over time, your article will find its way across the vast internet, sending you much desired targeted traffic.

Press release marketing is very similar to article marketing.

Joint venturing can be produce a lot of free, targeted traffic very quickly. Joint venturing usually involves exchanging mailing lists with other online marketers.

Likewise forum and social networking is usually free traffic. Choose forums and networks related to your niche. Your approach is to build relationships with other members in these organizations, then introduce them to your product or service.

Mailing lists are an absolute necessity for any online marketer. Build a targeted mailing list, then create a relationship with your list members by sending newsletters, product information, industry news, through an autoresponder.

Classified advertising can be free, or paid. Traffic from free classified advertising is usually very light. However, classified advertising can be valuable, targeted traffic.

Pay per click advertising can get very expensive, very fast. Before utilizing this method, get some expert coaching. A real advantage to pay per click is that it is extremely targeted traffic. If done correctly, pay per click is well worth the cost.

If you are just getting started online, look for ways to maximize your dollar. Article and press release marketing are very effective, free methods to generate solid traffic to your website.

An extremely valuable method for generating traffic to your website is funded sponsoring because not only do you build traffic, you generate solid income.

The important thing is choose a method, utilize that method to its potential. Then, as traffic to your website builds, move on to other traffic generation methods. Learn to use every method available to you.

The bottom line is this . . . your business will not survive without traffic.

When starting an online business it’s important to know the functions of both marketing and sales. Effort and resources are needed to grow a young business, it is easy to get sidetracked, turned around, and frustrated if marketing and sales are not co-ordinated properly.

Marketing and sales are complementary activities. It’s rare that one exists without the other. Once the similarities as well as distinctions are learned and incorporated into a business plan, you have a stronger shot at succeeding with your venture. A typical sales and marketing process has at least three steps.

First Step: Something has to grab a potential buyer’s attention. This attention-getter could be an advertisement, an article, something free, a recommendation from a blog, a referral, or an email. Those are just a few examples,and there are many more techniques, for moving someone’s focus to a place where you, the entrepreneur, can take that person forward toward your offering.

Have you seen this acronym, AIDA? Attention, Interest, Desire, Action are the elements is what we call the sales process, but is actually the marketing and sales process. Once a shopper goes online and inserts a term into a search engine, the computer screen fills with attention grabbers. Marketing’s job is to immediately engage the prospect’s attention.

Once you enter a term, the search engine does its magic by producing results in milliseconds. It’s truly remarkable. We take it for granted, but it’s still amazing. Your prospecting is at a point where you are wanting to look at choices. Marketing gives you more than you’ll ever need. One of them has an audio file, so you click it and it sounds good. Now, marketing needs to convert you to a place where you will be open to buy.

Second Step: It’s conversion time. An advertiser has a few seconds to move you from interest to a buying decision. This process is so rapid as a result of the very nature of online business. It’s about immediate gratification. He who hesitates is last. Time is precious to an online marketer. Graphics, placement, and content need to work together to convince you to buy the product and buy it now.

Third Step: Sales lets you know about the benefits of your product. Why you need it. There may be discounts, more free stuff, testimonials, emotion producing graphics, and a huge “order now button”. What everything is telling you is to choose this item right now. Here is where you are as the prospect: You made a search where marketing grabbed your attention, moved you to a point where you were ready to consider a purchase. That’s when sales jumped in with benefits, enticements, and a clear way for you to buy.

Once you learn how to analyze the sales process, it will help you refine and continue to refine your own internet marketing. A certain amount of analysis is very healthy as it will allow you to see what works and what needs work. You can go into the three steps, marketing, conversion, and sales, to determine your effectiveness. It’ll show up in your bottom line.

Those who have decent eBay businesses and aren’t interested in making more money should just ignore this article. For everyone else who wants to grow their business and increase profit margins, here are a few simple tips that you can put into practice immediately.

1) Building a customer base. You’d be surprised how many of your past customers want more of what you have. It’s not spam and it’s not being annoying. They have trusted you enough to purchase from you the first time, so email them back whenever you get new inventory, whenever you’re having a sale, or whenever you have something unusual or rare in stock. Export your past customers emails from PayPal and import them into an autoresponder to send out emails.

2) eBay’s Publisher Network. Basically you make money by getting people to buy stuff on eBay after clicking your link. Combine with tip 1 for insane results, that’s what this post is all about.

3) Checking your pricing. You should stay on top of your pricing once a week or so and adjust your prices to compete the changing marketplace. Many businesses will take a cut on their margins to turn over inventory quicker and increase cash flow.

4) Clearing out old inventory. Sometimes I hold on to inventory for too long by not budging on my profit margins or lowering pricing. This inventory takes up shelf space, ties up capital, and hinders cash flow. Get it out, get your cash back, and get some new stock.

5) Saving money is just as important as making money. With eBay policies these days, we’ve found ways to cut our listing fees by 60-80% with just a few simple strategies. We used to have multiple listings of the same item for more listing exposure. Now, we get the same sales and exposure by optimizing our listings for eBay’s new ‘Best Match’ search and putting any multiple items in the same listing. We also use the 30 day or good till canceled listing duration. Just by making those few adjustments, in some months we have seen our eBay fee invoices go from over $1500 a month to under $300.

So you’ve sold a few items on eBay from around your house. Congrats! By selling your first items on eBay, you’re ahead of 90% of people who hope to sell on eBay. You’re ahead of those people who dream about selling but never do anything to get there.

Maybe you’re starting to wonder, what should I do now? After you’ve sold the extra stuff around your house for a few bucks, where does the real money on eBay come from?

To answer the question, let’s think about what makes a business successful. What transforms one small hamburger stand into the instantly recognized McDonald’s chain? The answer is in the systems. The system is the process that has been optimized so you can repeat it all the time and so that it works every single time. In your eBay business, you want to create systems that work without you being there. Having your products automatically listed and re-listed to eBay while you sleep is just one great example.

There are great tools to help you create amazing systems. These tools free you from having to always sit in front of your computer all the time. It’s a great feeling when you wake up the next morning and discover how much more money you made in your account. It’s almost like you get paid to sleep.

Here are two more tips: Buy stuff to sell. Of course not everybody has the money to invest in a warehouse full of inventory, but start small. The key here is doing your research. What’s already selling on eBay, and how can I buy it for less than it’s currently selling for? Knowing your market is key. How do you do that? Well…

Keep Your Finger On The Pulse. If you want a quick, birds-eye view of what people are looking to buy on eBay, check out http://pulse.ebay.com. On this page, eBay lists the top 10 most searched for items in each category, along with the most watched items. In addition, eBay displays the top 5 largest eBay stores so you can quickly spot the latest trends. Right now, the largest eBay stores are selling media items, such as books and music. These categories obviously have some strong sellers.

Using the eBay Pulse will help you start identifying what buyers are looking for. If you take those same words from eBay pulse and do your own search on eBay, you can see how much competition there is. Products with low competition and high demand are great ones to pursue, and you’ve found what you can sell.

If you’ve been doing business online for any length of time, you know how difficult it is create an online income.

The truth is, it’s almost impossible to generate an online income if one particular item is missing from your marketing program. This component is so critical that an estimated 97% of all internet marketers never make a dime because their program is lacking this component.

This critical component is literally the difference between no income at all and thousands of dollars each and every month. This component is the life-blood of any online business.

If you are a knowledgeable online marketer, you have already made this component an integral part of your marketing campaign. And, you’re monthly income is probably more than most people earn in an entire year.

What is this necessary component and what makes it so critical?

This component is relationship building.

You may be asking yourself what relationship building has to do with your online business. It has everything to do with your online business. Without relationships, you have no online business.

Think about who you make purchases from . . . somebody you are comfortable doing business with, right? Somebody you know will take care of you if there is a problem. Somebody you have trust and confidence in.

Does it make good business sense to purchase from somebody you don’t trust? No, why take a chance with your money?

That trust and confidence factor is even more pronounced on the internet. On the internet you can’t sit down and visit face to face with your prospects. Everything is done through a website and email . . . very impersonal.

The internet is so impersonal, how do you convey trust and confidence to your prospective customers?

Before you ever ask for the sale, send your potential customers a lot of free, valuable information. Information that will benefit them. You want them to understand you have their best interest in mind. When you do ask for a sale, your prospect will know you are offering them some real value.

A newsletter is an excellent tool for creating trust and confidence in your prospects. The newsletter can be a short 10-message newsletter, or it can be a regular weekly or monthly newsletter. Whatever method you choose, you can set everything up in an autoresponder so the newsletter goes out on autopilot.

If you possess the talent and the time to write your own newsletter, you can do that. An alternative is to find talented people to produce your newsletter. You can find very inexpensive newsletter sources by doing a search for newsletters.

Once you generate trust and confidence in your potential customers, you’ll find them following you wherever you go.