15 Basic Steps to Starting an Online Store

Many people wants to start their own online stores, whether clothing, gift basket or toy stores on the Web. Using a clothing store as an example, here are some basic steps to creating your online storefront:

1. Define your business. The very first step is to always know what it is you want to do. This [...]

New Service to Monetize Your Website

If you’re thinking of earning from your expertise — whether presenting yourself as a consultant or as an expert in your field — there’s a new web tool that will allow you to earn money from your blog or website.

SpeaktoMe Expert Services http://www.speak-tome.com/ offers a widget that makes giving expert paid advice to clients easier. [...]

Buy an Established Website vs. Start a New Website from Scratch

Here’s an interesting question: Which is a better path to getting into internet marketing: buy a small, established website that has a monthly cash flow or start from scratch and learn-as-you-go?
In my view, the established site has the advantage of being already set up. The site has been in existence so there must be some [...]

Starting a Website: Build a Broad Authority or Niche Site?

Someone posted a very interesting question in Yahoo Answers: when you start a website, should you build a broad authority site, or a smaller niche site? The asker wants to know the impact of the size of the website in terms of search engine optimization as well as potential revenues.
Personally, I would go for a [...]

What Should be the Topic of Your Website?

I meet a lot of folks who want to start their own websites, but are stumped with the very basic question: “What should be the topic of my website?”
The topic and focus of your website is a result of a number of factors:

What is your objective for creating the website? A website for personal expression [...]

How to Engage Online Customers

You often hear of the advice that you need to “engage your customers.” Engaged customers are more loyal, and more likely to recommend you to others.

But how exactly do you “engage the customer,” especially online where you don’t get a chance to personally talk to the customer and present your products unlike traditional retailing?

Get out [...]

5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

One asker at Yahoo Answers raised the question of why her website was not getting any traffic. The site has been live for several months, but it is nowhere to be found in the search engines. Being a newbie who knows nothing about designing and creating a web site, she spent her meager resources to [...]

Online Marketing Beyond Traditional Search

MoreVisibility.com has an interesting paper that summarizes options for marketing on the Web other than the traditional search, and these are:

Contextual advertising = using pay per click at search engines partner sites (e.g. Google Adsense publishers) which are driven by theme or relevancy to keywords
Second tier search engines = pay per click at the top [...]

How to Estimate the Potential Advertising Revenues of Your Website

When starting a new website, it is good to have an idea of the potential income you can get from the website (well, if you’re going to invite investors you actually need financial projections when writing a business plan).
But how can you estimate how much income you can get, especially for an advertising-based website? What [...]