The internet is a mysterious place filled with many different types of subjects, many different types of walks of life and many different cultures. The internet is a digital melting pot of ideas and opinions. It is a place where anyone can go for information, entertainment, ideas, shopping and communicate with others from around the globe. Right now, nearly 150 million adults in the US are using the internet. Hard to believe, but on September 2, 2004, the Internet officially turned 35 years old marking the anniversary of the first communication between two computers in a UCLA engineering lab. Who knew on that day in 1969, that such a little network would grow up to allow us to communicate from one screen to another, thousands of miles apart?

Over the past 35 years, the internet has evolved, but nothing can compare to the amazing growth of the internet specifically over the past ten years. Ten years ago, designing a website was something that very few people even knew how to do. For the most part, the internet’s popularity was in its infancy and many individuals still did not even have a personal home computer, much less internet service. So, designing a web site was an art of sorts. Some designers were good and some were bad. Fortunately, 10 years ago, for web entrepreneurs, the web world was far less complicated and competitive than it is now.  It was far easier to make money back then too.

10 years ago, a person, any person with a little computer knowledge, could build a basic webpage in a day or two, promote it by telling people about it and then see a reasonably good response to whatever was the desired purpose of the site. Over the past ten years, we have seen a tremendous explosion of the internet’s vast capabilities and potential possibilities. We have even been through a great crash of the internet in the late Nineteen Nineties.

Some speculate that the internet grew too fast, some say that the information on the internet became too saturated, some even say that the advent of flash and 3-D slowed down the user experience on the internet so much that it caused users to change their focus of what they really wanted to use the internet for. No matter the reason for the collapse of the online market, the internet has evolved into something that is bigger than just finding information. 10 years ago, most people used the internet for information and as a new means of entertainment. Conversely, in the 2000’s for many, the internet has lost its appeal as just a place to hang around and surf. The internet has transitioned and now evolved into a new medium of urban culture. It has become something bigger than the fad that grew to epic proportions and then all of a sudden, crashed. It is now a
major source of revenue for companies large and small.

Users can now shop for music, watch their favorite television program on demand and rent a DVD from across the country or across the globe all at the same time without even leaving their couch. With the introduction of e-commerce, the web has become the strongest tool for sales, marketing and distribution. Today, if you’re not online using email, websites or have a Myspace page, you are NOT in business. Even after the great crash of the internet in the late 1990’s, many of the successful companies around the world began beefing up their online presence in the early 2000’s again. Why? They saw the future of sales and marketing on the web rebounding and exploding. They saw e-commerce adding to the bottom line in the overall profit of their companies. They knew that time would allow the customer to trust the internet and its secure sites. In time people would return to the internet, but only with security and safety on their side. The 2000’s have been all about safety and security and people are buying it. This move has proven very lucrative to most businesses simply because of the opportunity to offer their products in more efficient, cheaper ways to previously undiscovered or unreachable markets. In essence, these companies are no different than your business or mine, unless your business is not online yet.

The web commerce strategy has worked so well that smaller companies, home based businesses have found their niche in the e-commerce world. Now, even once obscure businesses can sell their widgets or gadgets without having to break a sweat running all over town peddling their product or spending thousands of dollars on traditional print advertising. Comparing a bricks and mortar business to an online business; an online business can cost 1/100 of the cost of a building with rent and expenses. The problem with traditional advertising is that when sales are made, the business owner never really knows where his client is coming from unless he/she opens the bricks and mortar shop and gets to know every customer personally. The internet solves that problem. On the internet, we can, at any time; see who’s buying, what they like and where they are from. Not to mention a host of other statistics and facts that will allow for fine tuning on the sale of a particular product or the optimization of a particular page.

So where do you and your business fit into the web world and all of it’s billions of pages and sites? The first step is creating, developing and understanding what you have to market, then understanding what your customer wants. These 2 elements of web marketing will take you further than any other concept you can arm yourself with on the web. Why? These are the fundamentals of what makes a website work well and make money or not do well, crash and burn to the ground in a huge pile of flames. Before we learn to walk, we must learn to crawl and no good director starts a movie without a script. In your case, the script should not look like a horror movie.

Knowing what you want, putting it out there, knowing what you have and putting it out there, knowing what others want and giving it to them, giving great value and service is all that is required to get rich on the internet. If you are ready to work smart and not hard, then you will find the following information useful. If you are ready to take your idea, that one idea that you just know is going to make you rich, that one idea that you have always wanted to pursue, that one great thing that no one else has thought of or that no one else can do as well as you can. I am talking about your inner passion. Find your product, know it, everything about it. Never stumble when someone asks you what it is and what it does, for you or for them. You have a great idea. Everyone has at least one great idea. You’ll develop it. You’ll cultivate it. You’ll Practice your pitch. And if you’re smart, you’ll do what you’ve always needed to do to get your entrepreneurial spirit kick started into hyper gear; build your website.

Because if you know your product and you know your customer and you know what your customer wants, once you plan it, build it and market it, people will come and they will buy you.

Here is one tip that will make you a successful and profitable web professional: “Keep it Simple.” There are many good and bad things one can do in web design. The key to making money on the web is to make things simple, effective and easy.

The fact is, in most cases, small business owners will employ a specialist to design their e-commerce site. In the mind of a good designer, he or she wants to almost always design something that is breath taking and amazing to look at. What most web designers do not do is know how to create a website that sells and makes money. The whole message that web designers rely on is visual appeal. That is what they are trained to do. They rely on their ability to make things look pretty, but are the sites they create functional? Did you hire a sales and marketing expert or did you hire an internet web page designer? They say good help is hard to find and it is true for web designers as much as any other profession. The hardest person to find is a web designer that knows how to sell and market online. Finding a web person that can create, develop and maintain a website that has relevance and that makes money at the same time can be challenging.

This is why so many small business owners have begun to create and promote their own business online. So many of you have begun to dabble with the website end of your business; learning how to use html, learning how to use Google. You business owners or aspiring entrepreneurs realize that you need to stay relevant to make money in today’s market. You are tired of false promises, over inflated budgets, high overhead costs and flaky designers. Having your own business today in America requires having a website that works. You are in control of your destiny. You can make your business work. You will increase your free time, your family time, your health, your bottom line. You will automate your business, walk away and make money while you sleep, while you play, even while you are taking your vacation. Then you can duplicate the process and do it all over again and make more money doing anything else you can think of. You are the master of your own destiny and that is why you have purchased this invaluable guide to creating a website that you will be proud of, a website that will focus on what you really love; a website that shares your passion with the world. A website that tells the world that you are here and you have something great to offer.

If you are an entrepreneur and don’t have a website or have a bad website, then you are killing your bottom line. This book will allow you to see the error of your ways before you even start. Reading this book will save you hundreds of hours of time otherwise spent through trial and error, tens of thousands of dollars in marketing time and cost, reading dozens of boring manuals and hundreds of internet articles about web design and will eliminate massive stress before it even has a chance to develop. If you follow these simple techniques that are proven to increase your hits and boost your conversions, you will see the positive effects having a website will do for your business. 

Now, not everyone is willing to embrace the change of pen and paper for the keyboard. My job is not to convince everyone in the world to use a computer, neither is yours. The only thing that you must do is attract the ones that are using the computer right now. Get their attention and keep it. Give them something compelling and don’t be afraid to make a bold statement about your product.

I laugh at the business owners who boast about how they don’t even know how to turn on a computer. They brag like it’s some kind of accomplishment. As far as web business goes, these people are the most foolish business people in the world. They are obsolete. Because of their ignorance, they will miss the greatest gain of their lives. You on the other hand won’t miss out because you are reading this book and acting on your desire. Your desire is to make money or at the very least, build something people will like.

Let’s get one thing totally straight. If you are going to promote your business on the web, you’d better shed any fear of failure or fear of success, any fear of not looking cool, any fear of not making a money making site, any fear of not being able to do this. You can do this and I am going to help you realize that you are the best web designer that you can employ for your company. Besides, you have the vision, you have the business sense and you have the foresight to see that creating your own website today will bring you more money and more success tomorrow.

At the very least, by reading this book, you will have saved thousands of dollars on a web designer that usually sells you a generic template not really knowing what you want anyway. By designing and making your own websites, you can experiment with new ideas, concepts and ventures inexpensively and immediately with almost immediate results. The internet is the only medium in the world that can offer the type of super-speed marketability that you want. It is the only place in the world where individuals just like you have made a million dollars in a minute. With my help, you are going to create a winning website system and repeat it over and over again. Even if you have never had a website system before, you can do this one. Even if you have never made a penny online before, you can do it. Even if you have never built a good website for your business, this book will teach you how to improve your skills dramatically and make websites that work with little effort.

Being in control of your website is the key to getting rich on the web. If you control the direction, size, scope and pace of your web presence, you will also be able to control the amount of exposure your website gets. You will write your own paychecks. You will decide how big your salary is going to be. You will be a successful online business, because you will be in control of your web exposure. Never rely on someone again to launch your idea. You will be launching your ideas from this point forward and this book is going to be a guide for you to refer to for the rest of your business career relating to your web presence. Because the World Wide Web is such an ever-changing environment, it’s hard to tell if the concepts and caveats discussed in the following pages will be relevant in 100 years, but they have benefited web marketers, myself included for many years and will benefit you and be relevant for many years to come.

So go ahead and read on. Take what you learn from this book and apply it to your daily internet-business routine and you will see the results of your web efforts translate into more money in your wallet. You have a great idea ready to share with the whole world. Go for it!

1. Know your product inside and out

Rule number one in creating a website, whether it be for sales and marketing or just a fun site for family is to know what your product is and why people will want to come to see it. Clarity is power and you must be clear about who you are marketing to. Your clarity will lead to the power of your product and the power over your customers’ choice to choose your product above anyone else’s. Most individuals who have their own websites will say; “I know what my product is. It’s my $2,000 aluminum bikes for sale online, everyone rides bicycles!” or ”It’s my famous yummy grape jelly and everyone loves grape jelly from Grandma’s house”. The fact is these are both true to a point.

Although we may know what we are selling (and I refer to everything on the web as selling because everything is marketing, it’s getting people to buy you) on the outer surface; a necktie, a Denver Bronco football signed by John Elway, a cast iron skillet, there is a deeper level that lies beneath knowing who you are, what you like and what you buy versus the likes, dislikes and motivations of your user. Knowing your product is not the same as knowing the product your customer wants to buy. You must be specific about your products. You must be completely concise about what the product is, what it does and why it will benefit them. Knowing your product is not the same as knowing what your user wants. Get to know your users.

How do you get to know what your users want? I rely on one simple acronym that was taught to me by an infomercial genius, “The Billion Dollar Man” Bob Circosta. His term is W.S.G.A.T. This stands for “what’s so good about that?” When you are ready to market your product, I suggest that you follow this same formula. When you think your product is good enough; W.S.G.A.T. it! Get some friends together and get them to test out your product and let them describe what’s so good about it. If you can describe the benefits of that product before you can describe the features, you will have a winning product. The object here is not to sell, but to help someone get what you have because they really need it. A lot of people have a problem with selling. They feel that selling is somehow associated with pressure or scare tactics. So…most people don’t sell. That’s perfect for you because you are not going to sell to your customers; you are going to help customers buy. Let me make one thing clear; when you are selling, you are doing something to somebody, when you are helping someone you are doing something for them. Features and benefits are the keys to making or breaking a product of any kind. Sell your customers on the products benefits and not the features.

The most common mistake that salespeople make is that they will try to sell a feature without first explaining its benefits. Therefore, most salespeople whether it be online or in a bricks and mortar store, miss more than 80% of the sales that they should have had if only they had done something for someone instead of just doing something to someone. For someone to buy your product, they must believe that there is something so good about it that they could not live without it. That is your challenge. Your goal is to convince them that your product is so amazing and will do so much for them at such an amazingly great value that they can’t say “no”.

Give your customer the value that they desire and then give them something else and then give them one more thing…then…drop the price one more time. If they were interested in the initial price, but not ready to buy until the incentive was given, then you must create a sale based on “added value”. For the tougher ones, you’ll get them on incentive 2 and for the “stone cold no one can sell these people”, you might get them with incentive 3. In other words; if you are selling a widget at $19.95 and your competition is selling the same widget at the same price, you must give the customer a definitive reason to come and buy from you. Give them things that the other guy (your competition) won’t. Drop your price to $14.95, include free shipping and give them a money back guarantee. “Added value” will make you different and being different on the web, at least in this sense, is good.

To boost your relationship with your customers and visitors, follow your stats online, run contests, get involved in your community, learn your subject and your site as much as you can and you will see an increase in the hits you receive and the sales that you make. Because buying comes from a deeper level of emotion than just words and a picture, it is your goal as a successful business person to make your site empathetic to a problem, competent enough to solve it and easy to understand. Thoughts lead to feeling, feelings lead to actions and actions lead to results. Knowing these simple elements, every site you create or every new business you start will have the exact same backbone: a solid one. To appreciate your customer, you must be willing to delve deep into their minds and ask the right questions and the right amount of questions. Remember, thoughts are not feelings. How we feel is not always how we think, feeling is much deeper and you must recognize that the principles and characteristics of human nature do not change simply because they are online as opposed to standing in the middle of a retail store. People are creatures of habit. Your aim is to make use of that characteristic to the point where it makes you money. Know your goals and know where the product will fit into society.

I know what my product is. It is a book about what to do to make one successful and what to absolutely avoid when creating a website. It is an essential collection of proven techniques designed for individuals that have an entrepreneurial spirit, own or are starting their own business and would like to tackle web business. I know what you want because you told me. I surveyed over 1,000 of you through independent online and direct personal surveys over a period of 6 months and you told me that you needed a guide on how to avoid the danger of bad web marketing and bad website making.

I know my product inside and out. I know that my product is NOT designed for EVERYONE who uses the web, that’s ok. It’s designed for people that want to make money using the web and attract more customers. As far as how to make sure you don’t get screwed or make terrible mistakes in your business endeavors on the web goes, this is the most enlightening web book you’ll ever read. Though that may be a bold statement to some, this book bridges the gap between an idea in your head and the actuality of your idea on the computer presented attractively and professionally so the world can buy it. I know that this book will help people who want to make money using web design, whether it be through selling their services and creating websites for other people or by starting a new business that employs these amazing tactics set forth for you. I know my product inside and out.

The structure of what you learn just in the very first few chapters of this book will carry forward with you for as long as you endeavor to make money on the web. I know that if you follow these simple do’s and don’ts, you will also not only know your product inside and out, you will know what your clients want and how you can service them. Sit forward, open your mind, you are about to make a whole lot more money on the web.

2. Focus on your customer first, then the site

The first question that you must ask yourself is “who is my customer?” Without knowing who your customer is, who will you sell to? You’ll sell to everyone right? Well, it is a fact that if everyone is your customer then no one is your customer. Being specific about whom and what you are trying to target is the lifeblood of any successful company. How else do you think the big guys build systems? What are systems? Think of an assembly line, it is a repeat process. Once you identify who you are selling to, it becomes much easier to refine your design to accommodate what your user needs and uses over and over again.

Too many times, new designers or amateurs make the awful mistake of creating a web page that is way too general. For example; one of the first websites that I created was a shopping website called allhousestuff.com Can you tell why it did not work already?  It was a great concept, but in practice because I had been so general, the entire project crashed and burned. The specific reasons for this mishap, looking back some time later were; First of all, I had no real intention of what category of people I was going to sell to, I was just kind of putting something out there to see who would hit it. I thought, “hey this is great, everyone will come to the site and I will get rich…it’s called allhousestuff… ALL…ya know”. Boy was I wrong. Ten thousand bucks later in marketing and design and usability mistakes, I was still penniless in the profit category. Not to mention the countless redesigns of the page that I thought I needed. I thought that there was something wrong with the page because no one was buying anything. The problem was me and my product.

Secondly and probably most detrimental was the fact that I had a hundred products to sell with no focus on one particular product. I had no special promotion and I had no real audience. After losing my shirt in my first venture, I vowed to never let this happen to me again.
Over the next couple of years, I read every book I could find on internet successes, hired a coach, found a mentor, employed the skills of video editors, audio editors, web designers, web developers and creative fine artists. I even went and got a degree in computers and web design. I did everything that I could do to make my sites work and with years of hard work, I got them to where they are now, making money. I did all of the hard work so that you don’t ever have to work hard, you’ll work smart and you’ll make money on the web.

You’ll still have to know your customer no matter what secrets you learn in this book. You are the master of your own destiny. This education is a floor for learning, not a ceiling. Getting to know who your customer is, is the most important first step to getting the sale, whether it’s you selling your trendy website design service to a business or you are selling Jimmy Choo Designer shoes online. You must know exactly who you are selling to and it is best if you can narrow it down to one group of people. There are all types of web customers out there. There are all kinds of products out there and there are all kinds of people out there. As much as we’d all like to believe that we can be of service to all customers out there, we can’t and here’s why; because no one is perfect! No one, not me, not you, no one! No one person can know everything about every customer.

If you are an aspiring web designer and know basic html, how to put a basic page online and update it, you are NOT going to call Coca-Cola and pitch your services to re-build their website for $25,000. Good luck. You are going to go down the street to your local area businesses and let them know that they would make a few more bucks with a website. Initially, you market to the area businesses because that’s your target customer. Then you build them a website. As your skills increase, you’ll experience a clientele upgrade. Your wallet will get fatter and you will probably get more customers with deeper pockets.

The same goes for the Jimmy Choo Designer shoes website. That concept would not target all women. It would target specific types of women. If the site targeted every woman, there would be no exclusivity. The website would probably focus on slender, more affluent, upper class women. Why? Because the shoes can cost hundreds of dollars, not to mention they are worn by many celebrities. Many view celebrities as iconic and emulate them. These shoes are designed for the rich. This website would market to rich, sexy or wanna-be sexy, slender, age 20 to 45 year old woman.

You see the difference between just marketing to women and marketing to rich, sexy, slender younger women? Here are the hot buttons of your specific market. Investing time and a little money to develop these direct concepts by key wording and Google Ad wording can return great dividends.

For now, it is imperative that before you even put your hands on the keyboard to start building your site, you have a firm grip on who your customer is and what they want. Until then, you will stumble around in the dark looking for the reasons why your site is not making money. Remember, no good director starts his or her film without a script. Write your script, get your website plan together and do your homework. It will pay off tremendously in the short term as well as the long.

3. Get to know your web stats

You really want to know the statistics of your website, especially without anyone else noticing? Then call your website hosting company and ask them how to log into your stats. Almost all web server companies can provide this basic service for free. The web URL usually looks something like; http://www.mygreatwebsite.com/stats. Once you know what the characters after the trailing slash (.com/) are, you can log in and see not only how many people have hit your site, also how many people use what type of browser, what their connection speed is and how long they stay on a page or how often they go to a specific page. This is highly useful when testing a specific page that you want people to go to. For example, if you have a page in your site created to increase sales of a certain item such as a “product of the month”; you will want to see if your web marketing effectively grabs the audience. You want to look at your conversion rate. What is conversion rate? It is how many people are buying a certain item over how many are visiting the site. For instance, if 100 people visit your site and 10 buy your product, then your conversion rate is 10 percent. These stats a few years ago were not as advanced as they are now and do amazing things especially for those selling products online.


There are also more advanced web statistics sites that anyone can sign up for and get even more amazingly accurate info about who's coming and who's buying on your site. My favorite for the past few months has been a free service called Google Analytics. This is a great place to review stats and an even better place to get to know your WORLD customer.

The Analytics program has a clean and easy layout, reports my specific conversions and basically keeps me up to date with my market. Business owners, get to know your stats, it will tremendously increase your bottom line.

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