Five Keys to Making Money Online
Would you believe there are tens of thousands of people who have found ways to make money online? Not only that, but their incomes are significant and growing, due to little competition and low cost of entry.
There are many opportunities online, but here are the 5 factors you really need to consider, to guarantee your success:
1. Set your goals.
As with any business you need to set goals. Goals help you visualize where you want to go, and keep you motivated when you get up in the morning. You goal may be to earn $500 or $10000 a month, it may be to take that dream vacation, or it may be to give up your job. These are all great goals. It is imperative that you write them down and reread them often. You need a short term goal, e.g monthly goal, to keep you motivated from day to day and a longer term goal 1-2 years, to keep you on track and prevent you from chucking it in. I am confident that if you adopt a positive attitude and embrace your goals then you will soon be making money online.
2. Take time to research.
As I alluded to earlier there are many people making money online, and there are thousands of different businesses that you can try. The internet is a mine field of information and “making money online” opportunities are not difficult to find. However you will need to decipher the genuine opportunities from the scams. Many online promises are just methods to extract money from you. Some do’s and don’ts
Don’t fall for the “get rich quick schemes” that promise huge returns in record time.
Do try and email or telephone for more information.
Do search online for feedback on the opportunity e.g. try name of opportunity + scam.
Don’t part with money without consulting a friend you can trust and/or sleeping on it.
3. Find something that you like.
You’re the boss now, so do yourself a favor and choose something you enjoy. This will greatly enhance your chances of success. A few things to consider:
Do you enjoy writing?
Do you enjoy talking to people?
Do you enjoy working on the computer?
Do you have a flair for sales?
Are there particular things that you are passionate about e.g sports, music?
Do you want to be contactable 24×7?
Do you want to have flexible/fixed hours?
Personally I like to work on my computer on my own time and my choice of internet business matches this. Find out what suits you, and you can weed out the business ventures which are not for you. Don’t settle for second best, choose something you are comfortable with.
4. Find something worth your while.
While it is a good idea to avoid the sales pitch that promises the sun, moon, and stars; it is also important that you don’t take the safe option, that guarantees $5 an hour for sending emails, filling our surveys, or licking stamps. These amount to you underselling yourself, because the opportunities of making money on the internet are so much greater. Look for systems which offer a good monthly return for a few hours work a day, if you find something with a residual income all the better.
5. Anything for an easier life.
One of my motivations for venturing into internet marketing was to create an easier life for myself. As I sat in my day job I used to think. “There must be easier ways to make money” and there are! Earning a living online means that you have the luxury of working from home and choosing your own hours. It is important that you can exploit these perks, by being able to take time off, take extra vacations and spend more time with your family. You need to avoid the 40-50 hours a week for the sake of your sanity.
Introduction to E-Commerce
Many people new to websites and/or ecommerce are confused at the in and outs of ecommerce. Even many people who are fairly adept at scripting can set up a store using some popular package such as OSCommerce and then are left stumped by the idea of making it work with a payment gateway to actually collect money and put it into their account.
How Funds are Collected
Ecommerce simply refers to the practice of shopping online. From the site owner’s perspective, it entails collecting funds from sales transactions on their website and depositing that money into the bank. In order to collect funds, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway (discussed below). Basically, when a person enters their credit card number on a website, the card number and buyer information is sent to a payment gateway. This is done securely. The payment gateway will interface with a payment processor to check availability of funds as well as any other criteria set for accepting transactions. If the funds are available, the payment processor will then deduct the funds. The payment gateway will then report back a successful transaction to the merchant, at which point the merchant’s shopping cart system will respond by displaying a “Thank You” type message to the buyer. Funds will sit until the transaction is settled, which means the funds are collected and deposited to your bank account. Until a transaction is settled, the transaction will not post to your bank account and the corresponding debit will not post to the buyer’s credit card account.
Merchant Accounts
A Merchant Account is a special type of account specifically for online retailers. They are designed to allow non-POS (point of sale) transactions using credit cards, or transactions where you don’t have the person’s credit card in hand. In other words, you don’t have a card swiper. A merchant account is not the same as a bank account. It acts as a go between between your payment gateway and your bank account, accepting funds from credit cards which are then deposited into your bank.
A merchant account is a relationship based on trust between you and the issuing bank. The bank takes funds from the buyer’s account and deposits into your account. A payment processor takes care of checking for availability of funds and debiting from the credit card account. The bank issuing the merchant account is trusting that you will fulfill your end of the transaction by providing the product or service that the buyer purchased. In case where this does not occur, the buyer can dispute the transaction. This puts the issuing bank on the line because they are then obligated to return the funds to the buyer’s card (a chargeback). Therefore, merchant providers are taking a risk in allowing a merchant to take credit cards under their name.
The organization providing your merchant account will do underwriting on the account when you apply to check your credit. If you have a history of too many chargebacks, you may be denied. In fact, too many chargebacks can result in you, as a merchant, being put on the Terminated Merchant File (also called The Match File). This is a blacklist which will effectively prevent you from ever receiving a merchant account again.
Payment Gateways
A payment gateway serves as the front end to your merchant account, allowing you to manage funds, transactions, and the like. It also serves as a connection between your website and your merchant account. It takes data submitted via your secure order forms and presents it to your processing bank. The processing bank then approves or declines the transaction and sends its response back to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then turns around and provides this data back to the merchant for appropriate handling of the transaction. A payment gateway, then, does not offer services such as merchant accounts or shopping carts, although some of the larger known gateways do provide such options as value-added services.
Some of the things to look for in a payment gateway are compliance with CISP, SDP and DISC (security initiatives put out by the major credit card companies), virtual terminal (to be able to accept transactions over the phone by typing in their data rather than only relying on your website), fraud prevention, recurring billing, methods of integration, cost and whether they can accept e-checks or not.
Fraud prevention is a big one because, as stated above, too many fraudulent transactions will result in chargebacks which could end up putting you on the Match List and your merchant account closed. Some of the common fraud detection mechanisms are Address Verification (AVS) which compares the customer’s address with that on file with the issuing bank, CVV2 which makes use of the 3-digit security code on the credit card (4 digit on American Express cards).
Most gateways will provide instructions on how to interface with their servers from your web store. Most gateways offer two methods of integration.
One method is to have your site POST a form to the gateway’s server which is pre-populated with your customer’s information. At that point, the customer will provide the customer with the payment form which allows them to type in their credit card number in a secure environment. After processing occurs, the customer is then routed back to your website along with the results of the transaction. Your site again takes over the process. This method is usually easier to set up for site owners and it also means the site owner does not need to purchase their own SSL certificate (allowing secure transactions on the site itself). The tradeoff is that you do need to send your customers off of your website for payment collection. Many gateways offer ways to make the payment form look like your website using customized headers and footers, but the fact remains that the visitors are leaving your website.
The second method is totally invisible to the customer. If the site owner has an SSL certificate, they can set up security on their own site. This means they can host the payment form themselves, totally customizing it to their website. When the customer submits payment, your site will securely and invisibly submit the information to the payment gateway. The payment gateway will do the usual processing and then invisibly send the response back to the merchant’s website, allowing it to respond properly. From the customer’s perspective, they never left your website. And they never did. This type of setup requires an SSL certificate as well as access to the CURL library.
Many gateway providers can get you set up with a merchant account at the same time as the gateway. So, in most cases, you do not need to sign up for them separately.
Ecommerce Hosting For Online Business
When you plan to start an online business, you will need to find a reliable web host that meets your requirements. Searching for a reliable and cheap web host is not an easy task. But if you know what you are looking for, it makes your task simpler.
You can trust a cheap web host only if it meets your business requirements. The process of verification comprises of some common issues and some other issues specific to your business.
A major concern is the quality of support provided by the host. You could e-mail a cheap webhosting company a few times to get an estimate of the response time they provide.
You should also try to analyze the quality of the answers provided by them. Are the answers really in-depth or do they just cover the basic things? Make enquiries about the various methods of support. Most webhosting companies offer online support personnel, message boards and help desks.
A webhosting company that provides the correct balance of substance and promptness would be an ideal solution for you.
Some key points to consider before choosing your web host:
1. Storage Space
It is an important parameter to begin your search for a reliable web host. You require at least 100 MB space for even a simple site. Most good web hosts offer a minimum of 1 GB space to their customers.
2. Bandwidth
It is another important part of the verification process. Most good web hosts offer 25 to 50 GB Bandwidth.
3. Support System
As discussed in the beginning of the article, it is the most important point to check.
4. Secure Servers
A secure server is an essential requirement if you are selling products/services online. Try to look for web hosting companies providing SSL encryption since this will guarantee security for all money transactions conducted on your site.
5. Private CGI-BIN
It is a good scheme to have a private CGI-BIN directory for the safety of your files. This is where you store your binary scripts and interactive programs including shopping carts and payment processing.
6. Web Log
This would help you a lot to keep track of various statistics for your business. These statistics aid you to develop new strategies to retain your present customers and attract new customers.
7. Operating System and Program Language Capabilities
All reputed web hosting companies allow front page on either a UNIX or Windows based system. Many web hosts provide both Windows and UNIX based hosting but the rates may differ.
8. Credibility
The web host should be reputed amongst its customer base.
9. Physical Location
Last, but not the least, the physical location of the servers is also an important consideration. Is the location prone to natural calamities or political insecurity?
A very practical and useful method to find a good web host is to discuss with people you know (vendors/business associates/friends) that have web sites. Enquire about their experiences with their current and past webhosting services.
Most of the cheap webhosting companies assure you of free technical support. However, a major concern with many of these companies is that you learn about their incapability when it is too late. The fact is that they simply fail to deliver their promises. Their cheap rates do not allow for the proper staffing needed to deliver the required customer support.
With a high quality and reputed webhosting company, you will pay a little more but the truth is, in business, you get what you pay for. So, if you are really serious about your business and also your time, consider web hosts starting at the top.
E-Commerce Hosting Considerations
Website hosting can be a complex undertaking. Determining how much space you need, how much transfer, finding a reliable host, and getting everything online is no simple task. Add ecommerce to the mix and things become even more complex. This article will deal with some of those additional complications to finding a host for an online store. All of the same considerations to finding general hosting can be applied to ecommerce hosting, there are simply a few additional ones that need some attention.
Basics: Disk Space and Transfer
The core states of any kind of hosting, ecommerce or not, remain space and transfer, or traffic. Generally measured in monthly increments, your space and transfer will place a crucial role in determining just what size plan you need. Ecommerce sites will, generally speaking, require more space and transfer than an equivilant sized site without ecommerce. This is due to the presence of the shopping cart upon which the online storefront is based. Shopping cart programs are installed to the account on which they operate, requiring space, and their scripts for running the store will require additional transfer to handle customers as they browse, add items to their cart, and check out. Will there be a tremendous amount of extra transfer required by the cart? That depends on how many use the cart and on the cart itself. This is why its best to start small and having a clear upgrade path to handle future popularity.
Prospective online merchants will generally have a good idea how many products they’ll be selling initially. This will vary wildly from merchant to merchant, and many merchants don’t put their entire stocks online. It is wise to start with a considered selection of products first, especially if you wish to initially keep your hosting plan small and upgrade as the store prospers. Those with a great deal of products need to be aware they will probably be facing a bigger monthly fee for a larger hosting plan. Once the decision is made regarding the products, attention can be turned to finding a suitable shopping cart program to contain them.
Shopping Cart
The choice of shopping cart can be a personal one. Those entirely new to ecommerce will probably not have any experience with any kind of shopping cart software. There are a number of popular choices, and most hosting companies will provide one, if not a variety, from which you can choose. It is important to find a shopping cart that suits the individual user, as attempting to change your shopping down the road can be a long process that will, most likely, bring your store down during a transitional period. Don’t immediately jump at the first cart a host offers. Ask if they have demos and try them out. Be sure it’s a program you can learn and use, as it is the primary way you’ll be doing your online business. Even if you have a large business and have a design firm setting up the cart, a rudimentary knowledge of the cart’s processes is highly recommended.
Learn as much about your prospective shopping cart software as possible. Make sure it supports SSL, a common site security protocol that will help keep your customer’s credit card numbers safe when ordering online. It will need to support your merchant account and payment gateway. In many cases a host might bundle these services, so compatibility isn’t an issue. If you secured your merchant services separately from hosting, be sure they are compatible. Find out if the cart has a recommended maximum product limit and, of course, try not to exceed it. The store may slow down and perform poorly if there are too many products in it.
Finally, make sure it will do everything you want it to do. Some merchants sell services and downloadable items that don’t conform exactly to the order product ship product flow. If your cart doesn’t support these features by default, there may be 3rd party add-ons that will provide this functionality.
Reliability and Support
Perhaps of greatest importance is reliability in your chosen host. Think in terms of a “brick and mortar” storefront. If someone locks the front door during business hours, then no customers can come in and nothing is sold. Similarly, if an online store is down at any hour, no customers can come in and nothing is sold. You want the most reliable hosting for such a mission critical site. Never just take the word of a hosting company’s site in regards to their uptime. Do research and look for customer reviews of your prospective host. Online merchants should always be willing to pay more for a reliable hosting company with good uptime and support. A good rule of thumb is to stay away from free or “bargain basement” hosts, since support and uptime are usually the first things to suffer with this kind of hosting.
Free Sales With Secure Shopping Cart Software
Succeeding in business can be a hassle and a headache without the right tools. This is especially true when dealing with ecommerce. Regardless of the market, service, or goods being offered, the one tool that is essential to the success of every online ecommerce business is a reliable ecommerce shopping cart.
The online shopping cart is your one stop container for placing and receiving orders online. A basic shopping cart will allow the customer to specify the quantity of the goods wanted, take the customer’s credit, billing, and shipping information, and actually allow the customer to place the order. However, a good shopping cart software solution will do all of this and so much more.
Many ecommerce shopping cart solutions offer customizable templates and design tools for your shopping cart and sometimes even your website. There are also several web hosting shopping cart solutions that will not only handle the order placement and transactions, but also handle the hosting needs of your website.
Other tools and features included in shopping cart software packages are affiliate system management programs, search engine optimization tools, and advanced shipping options. There are also several ecommerce providers that offer secure encrypted credit card processing along with other merchant account tools as a part of using their shopping cart solution for your ecommerce needs.
Almost all reputable shopping cart software providers also offer full telephone, email and live internet chat support in case any questions may arise after purchasing their service. All of this is done to allow you to focus on growing your online business. By automating the backend of your website, you don’t have to worry about manually taking each order that comes in. Ecommerce shopping cart software handles all of this for you.
Make your online business profitable, secure, and reliable with an affordable shopping cart software solution. It is one of the best investments you can make in the operational aspect of your ecommerce venture.
Building Ecommerce Web Sites
Building a web site isn’t something that is really cut and dry. There’s a huge variety of products and services that can either help you get your web site where you want it or simply confuse you. It’s also important that you make the right choices upfront so that you don’t end up having to restructure your whole web site because of some problem in your design layout. The level of time investment neccessary for mastery in a lot of these software packages can range from little to a very significant amount. Because of this I feel it’s important to be lead in the “right” direction to make sure you don’t spend time in the wrong areas, or learning some software that might not be all that useful for you later on (*coughs* Frontpage *coughs*).
Where you should start greatly depends on what you plan on attempting to do, and how deep you’re going to dive in. For a moderately professional, clean looking web site without a lot of automation or intensive animated graphics you can probably get by with some basic knowledge of html, ability with a good WYSIWYG editor, and an image editting program. On the other hand, if you’re someone that’s looking to build something that will really wow your audience then you might consider spending some major time and developing some animation skills with a program like Macromedia Flash. I personally always spring for what I believe will bring me the greatest amount of profit with a minimal amount of effort, and because of this I usually end up spending all of my time diving in deeper with only HTML editor, and my image editor.
What is a HTML editor?
A HTML editor is what allows you to get by with minimal knowledge of HTML. Yes, that means you don’t have to know everything about HTML to have a decent looking website. When you use a HTML editor it interprets what you’re doing (inserting an image for example) as being a certain series of HTML tags with attributes, and does it for you Thus, what you see on your screen is what you get. Instead of seeing a bunch of HTML code in text format, you’ll mostly see what will actually show up in your browser once your web site is up while you’re making it. I highly recommend using the latest version of dreamweaver, it is well-known as one of the best HTML editors by general consensus. Dreamweaver’s interface is very friendly, has a built in FTP client, and is specifically built to be flexible enough to suit both the coder and the everyday amatuer webmaster.
Image editing? What do I need that for?
If you’re going to make a professional *appearing* web site it’s important that you can make some basic, decent looking graphics. There’s a lot of graphics problems that can truly get the job done, but as far as power and flexibility goes I recommend Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop definitely takes some time getting used to, but in the end it’s very rewarding. I’ve ended up using my knowledge of Photoshop to make not only graphics for multiple web sites, but also touched up portraits, made business cards, flyers, and other online advertisments such as banners. Infact, I’ve used it for everything except animation. But it also comes with Adobe Imageready which is very good with animation.
Let’s get some sales!
Kick off your new web site you’ve gotten up from your knowledge of webmastering and image editing with a few new sales. Sounds like a plan? Well a great way to do that quickly is with pay per click advertising. With the tools brought to us by some of the biggest pay per click advertisers out there we should be able to make a good evaluation of how much profit we’re going to make without much investment upfront.
The big question behind pay per click advertising is whether or not it’s worth the cash when you can simply get traffic from regular search engine ranking (otherwise known as organic traffic). Afterall, there are plenty of companies out there that promise to help get you all the traffic you need through optimizing your web site for organic ranking. The answer to this question is quite simple, profit is profit. Through conversion tracking tools such as those offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google Adwords anyone can calculate exactly what their profit is after cost of PPC advertising is taken out. In my opinion, Google Adwords has the most user-friendly interface among the PPC advertisers. Google Adword’s interface makes it very easy to see which keywords are pulling you in the most sales, and which ones aren’t even worth your advertising money.
Getting those sales leads you’ve been building up to buy!
Once you’ve scored a few sales it would probably be a good idea to start using some kind of lead management services. I highly recommend the use of autoresponders for this purpose. Autoresponders are, essentially, a newsletter sign-up that allows you to strategically determine what you want to send each lead after a certain alotted amount of time. For example, let’s say someone visits your web site and you offer them a free newsletter. If you were selling an ebook on some very complicated topic, you might consider sending them only information on the most basic concepts at first to get them interested. Slowly but surely, you can turn those visitors that might have left your web site and never have returned into some serious revenue.
Are Drop Ship Directories Really Worth The Money
This question is often asked by many people hoping to start a new ecommerce site or simply adding to an existing one. The answer to the question can be simply answered with another question: How much is your time and online business worth to you? The more experienced ecommerce site owners will often ask the question a little differently: How do I find a useful, and legitimate, drop ship directory? The answer to this question is not immediately straight forward without doing a little homework. However, when you find a great directory, it can be worth the price of admission a thousand times over. So, in this article we are going to present a couple of important pieces of information that can help you answer some of these questions and guide you through the forest.
First, let’s get on the same page together and define what a drop ship directory is supposed to do (or contain). These directories are supposed to contain the names and contact information for companies that drop ship their products to your customers for you. They offer you the lowest wholesale pricing. They are able to ship single quantity items to your customers. They do not require minimum orders and the drop shipper will not ask you to pay any association fees. The drop shippers in the directory are usually one of two types:
- They are the manufacturer, or
- They are an import distributor with a warehouse.
So, these folks are a key business ingredient when it comes to supplying and shipping product to your customers without you carrying the inventory.
How hard can it be to actually find a drop shipper?
The best way to answer this question is to try and find one yourself. If you have actually tried this in the past, then you know this can be a very time consuming task that requires some research. This is particularly true if you are trying to find a specific niche of products the general public has not seen often. These products typically do very well on the Web with a niche type of ecommerce business. So, finding the wholesale supplier to drop ship the items can be a very time consuming challenge, and sometimes you might not find anyone. One of the biggest values a drop ship directory brings is the ability to save you all the time searching for a drop shipper. The time saved can let you concentrate on other parts of your business. Another value a directory can bring is the possibility of finding new product ideas for your business.
What should I be evaluating?
Let’s now turn our attention towards what you should be looking for in a drop ship directory. The drop ship directory business has been plagued in the past by many scam artists. Today, there are still some directory scams out there, which is to be expected. Virtually any line of business has, or has had, it’s share of scams. A little bit of education is key in spotting the real directory companies from the not so real directory companies. With a little bit of knowledge and a trained eye, you can spot them fairly easily. For purposes of this article, we are going to focus on evaluating a directory and the company offering it. Again, this should help guide you through the forest.
There are ten key parameters you should consider when considering a drop ship directory:
1. Balance: You want to find a directory rich in many different categories of products rather than the quantity of products available. Many of the directories try to advertise how many products are available in their directory (i.e. 500,000 products). Why is the number of categories important? A directory will not serve you well if it has hundreds of thousands of products, and none of them are in your product interest category. A directory with a good balance has focused on their categories of drop shipper products rather than the quantity. This gives you a better chance of finding something for your line of business.
2. Uniqueness: You will want a directory with uniqueness amongst its drop shippers. The drop shippers should offer a wide array of unique products that are not necessarily mass marketed. Why? Web sites offering unique and unusual products often do well on the Web versus sites trying to sell big brand name products that you can find with a mega retailer. A directory offering a bunch of big brand name product drop shippers could land you in the highly competitive commodity market against the mega retailers.
3. Selection: A directory with a good selection of drop ship categories is important. The number of drop shippers or the number of products a directory carries should not be the goal. The goal and question should be, “Do they have a drop shipper that would fit my line of business.” A common mistake for many folks is getting fixated on the quantity of products a directory might offer with its drop shippers. The question they start to ask is, “A directory with over 700,000 products ought to have something for me to sell.” Wrong! Be sure to remember the first parameter we mentioned. Balance.
4. Search Method: The directory must explain the methods they use to find drop shippers. Be careful of directories that do not publish their search methods. If they do not explain their search methods, they may not have a solid search methodology. The directory could be full of a bunch of middlemen. At that point, the directory would be worthless to you. Directories using search methods such as trade show searches and foreign government agency searches are preferred over directories only focused on Internet searches. Why? Not all drop shippers and importers have a Web presence. A directory based on a bunch of Web searches could be missing some of the best hard to find drop shippers.
5. Sample: A sample of the directory should be made available to give an idea of format and information provided. The actual names of the drop shippers will not be given in a sample, but you will get an understanding of the type of information provided.
6. Price: This is a subjective parameter but there is something to consider. As an observation, most legitimate directories on the Web today are sold between the $60 and $80 price mark without any markdown. If you find one good drop shipper in a directory and you sell their products on your site, you could find your directory investment paid off quickly with just a sale or two.
7. Education: The Company selling the directory should have a website fairly resourceful with FAQ’s and articles written by its own research staff or owner. Topics should include drop shipping, ecommerce, importing and general FAQ’s about drop shipping. Watch out for directory sites only containing FAQ’s about their directory and not drop shipping.
8. Custom Search: Find out if the company offering the directory will do a custom search for a drop shipped product. A custom search can sometimes be done under certain conditions with the directory’s parent company. As of this writing, Hienote is the only directory company advertising this type of service.
9. Toll Free Number: You should be able to talk to the folk’s offering the directory without paying for the call. Contact by email only is not acceptable! Also, be leery of directory sites without toll free numbers or only a cell phone number given as this could be a suspicious con artist.
10. Customer Service: Any online business that cares about its customers should have a section dedicated to customer service. A company that offers a drop ship directory is no exception. It should have a section of its site dedicated to customer service. At a minimum it should have a toll free number, mailing address (not just a P.O. Box number!), email address, hours of operation, money back guarantee, and a phone number for calls outside of the country.
With these ten parameters you should now have enough knowledge to get started in the right direction for evaluating a drop ship directory. In addition, hopefully this has given some food for thought in terms of considering a drop ship directory for your online business.
