Home Based Web Business
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Welcome to the Home Based Web Business Website
This website was designed for people looking for independence by starting businesses on the web. What I want to give you is all the resources for you to start your own home based web business.
First lets start from your e-commerce site.
There are different types of businesses that you can start from the web, the business can be:
Brokerage, think online classifieds, e-bay, and other market intermediaries for various products. In this type of business you will be facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers
Retailing or e-tailing, selling goods and services over the web. Business success will be determined by visibility in the online world. Visibility will be determined by relevancy of what is being sold on different advetsing mediums, (affiliates, relevant websites, search engines). This applies to you if you are selling others products (in which case you will have to worry about sourcing the product). However, if you are selling your own product, then is time to manufacture and distribution. The advantage of this model if you are a manufacturer is that you are eliminating the middle man providing a better price to the costumer. On the other hand, you might want distributors as they help you expand your market. We will focus on easy ways to set up retailing sites for home based web businesses.
Advertising, content sites, (such as this one) offer relevant content to a targeted audience in exchange for advertisiment and sponsors. Programs such as adsense, affiliate programs, barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc. apply well to this type of business model.
Subscription, you either provide content, social networking, or other for a daily, monthly, fee. In this sections you have services such as internet dating sites, research and other content information website. If you are an expert in a topic that is highly specialized, i.e. only certain customers will be interested in this product (think media research, investment research, etc) then the subscription model will be beneficial for you. For Social Networking websites, if you have the technical skills and marketing ability, you can create your own social networking site as your home based web business.
Since this website is about giving you some easy to set up home based web businesses, we will focus on online retailing and then move on to harder subjects.
Online Retailing Basics
Set up your e-commerce site:
1st Reserve your domain name. The domain mane is the address people write on the hypertext tab of the browser. The domain name should be your company’s name or descriptive of your company business.
Domain Servers: Network Solutions at www.networksolutions.com, Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com/, and Yahoo www.yahoo.com
Most e-commerce siter offer complete solutions
2nd 2nd Find a host. The hosting company provides space for your website. The more space you have the more information you can upload to your site.
Hosting companies: Yahoo Small Business http://www.yahoo.com/, IPowerWeb.com at http://www.ipowerweb.com/, GeoCities www.geocities.com.
3rd Design your page. You have online web design programs such as frontpage or dreamweaver. Again, most hosting companies, give you templates and easy to use "what you see is what you get" editors. If you do not have the patience or the time to design a webpage for your home based web business, then you can hire a professional or a resourceful amateur from www.craigslist.org or www.elance.com
4th. Promote your retail site. is not enough just to create a website, you need to be actively promoting your site. The following is a partial list of your marketing camping for your home based web business:
1.-List your website on major search engines
2.- Optimize your website "Keywords" so your website is more relevant for searches.
3.- Pay for some online advertising, either, addiliate, banner, adwords, etc.
4.- Online Networking, make relationships with other webmasters who do not directly compete with you but provide a related product, service or information that complements your own
5.- Create related websites (such as blogs) in order to get consumer feedback (which is extremely valuable for your home based web business)
Now that we have created a website (many host provide you with good tools to create your website) now lets see the business opportunities on the web.
For your home based web business, many companies are creating opportunities that are accessible and easily to implement even for novice web users.
Lets start from your presentation
Your website should be easy to navigate and the reader with a simple look have to be able to see all that you have to offer. Remember that with so many options available on the web, having somebody stay and look around your retail store to find out what you sell or what you do, it’s a bit of wishful thinking, and a waste of your time. Look at the http://www.zappos.com/ website, they are an online retailer of shoes, as soon as you come into the website you know what they do, and what they have available (considering that they have a huge selection)
The consumer should also get enough assurances that you are a well to do business and that you offer guarantees, like money back, trial period, client’s testimonials, etc. Many businesses that sell information online rely on these guarantees (although some many not live up to them) because they build trust with the costumers. The more guarantees that you offer the better you look in the eyes of the costumers (remember, though, that there are economics to all this, so offer reasonable guarantees that wont make you loose money). A good way of getting implicit trust is by being referred through a third party unbiased party. Those are difficult to do but it will do wonders for your business, not only because you get the recommendation but also because you tap into a new pool of readers increasing your product or service exposure. It may be reasonable to do a deal with this party (I know is not going to be unbiased) in order for this party to help you promote your products.
Now you have established who you are and what you do, you need to establish value for your consumer. The question that you need to ask yourself is: why would they buy from me? In here you have to convey to the costumer what is the advantage of your product or service over your competitor, is it quality, design, price, service, etc. What you offer in here is what makes you different from your competitors. This is your identity and what (in the mind of the consumer) is your product or service will be associated for your home-based web business.
This is all “front office” stuff, meaning; this is the image that you will show to your costumers. However, for the sake of discussion I am going to assume that you already know how you are going to distribute, secure a supplier for your product, and have set up all the mechanisms to receive payment and get consumer feedback. If not I would recommend reading information on “drop shipping”, (meaning the supplier ships directly to the consumer so you will not have to hold inventory), Paypal, so you can collect payments, and setting up space on the website to get feedback from your costumers.
I understand that the aforementioned is a lot of work; there is an easier way to do this (it has its advantages and disadvantages)
Easy way to set up your home based web business:
There are websites such as cafepress.com that allow you to set up virtual retail stores for free (if you want a more professional looking one, or one that you can link back to your website and incorporate to the user interface, then you will have to pay a nominal fee) Many webmaster currently use them to sell extra products from their website (cafepress does t-shirts and other impressions on commercial products)
There are already set up online marketplaces where you can sell your products, such as Ebay, this gives you the advantage of being part of an already set up system that allows easy access to costumers and requires low technical expertise to get started.
Internet malls, some of this companies for a fee allow you to set up a site with their under their umbrella selling their products or the products of others, gaining a commission. Internet malls offer ready set up websites that you need to market and distribute. Note that since this is an easy business model to acquire, the competition for selling to costumers is rather steep.
Affiliate programs, in this case you become a virtual reseller of other people’s products. By entering into a reseller agreement, you will get commissions from sales made for your affiliate. All you need to do is sign up with the affiliate marketer, get your id, and put their link into your website.
Drop-Shipping companies, it allows people to sell other people’s product without carrying inventory. They either have a pre-fabricated website or you can add your catalog to yours. Remember due to the easy of entry into these programs you are going to experience strong competition.
This should give you a couple of ideas on what for online retail business. One of the most important things to remember is that success in the internet retailing will depend on traffic, the more traffic that your website builds the better. Think of it as opening an actual retail store in a main street in your town. Many people will walk around your store and peruse your items, but only a fraction will buy them. The higher the number of people looking through your store (in this case your web retail business) the higher the chances of them buying something. ¶ 12:49 PM 1 comments
This website was designed for people looking for independence by starting businesses on the web. What I want to give you is all the resources for you to start your own home based web business.
First lets start from your e-commerce site.
There are different types of businesses that you can start from the web, the business can be:
Brokerage, think online classifieds, e-bay, and other market intermediaries for various products. In this type of business you will be facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers
Retailing or e-tailing, selling goods and services over the web. Business success will be determined by visibility in the online world. Visibility will be determined by relevancy of what is being sold on different advetsing mediums, (affiliates, relevant websites, search engines). This applies to you if you are selling others products (in which case you will have to worry about sourcing the product). However, if you are selling your own product, then is time to manufacture and distribution. The advantage of this model if you are a manufacturer is that you are eliminating the middle man providing a better price to the costumer. On the other hand, you might want distributors as they help you expand your market. We will focus on easy ways to set up retailing sites for home based web businesses.
Advertising, content sites, (such as this one) offer relevant content to a targeted audience in exchange for advertisiment and sponsors. Programs such as adsense, affiliate programs, barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc. apply well to this type of business model.
Subscription, you either provide content, social networking, or other for a daily, monthly, fee. In this sections you have services such as internet dating sites, research and other content information website. If you are an expert in a topic that is highly specialized, i.e. only certain customers will be interested in this product (think media research, investment research, etc) then the subscription model will be beneficial for you. For Social Networking websites, if you have the technical skills and marketing ability, you can create your own social networking site as your home based web business.
Since this website is about giving you some easy to set up home based web businesses, we will focus on online retailing and then move on to harder subjects.
Online Retailing Basics
Set up your e-commerce site:
1st Reserve your domain name. The domain mane is the address people write on the hypertext tab of the browser. The domain name should be your company’s name or descriptive of your company business.
Domain Servers: Network Solutions at www.networksolutions.com, Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com/, and Yahoo www.yahoo.com
Most e-commerce siter offer complete solutions
2nd 2nd Find a host. The hosting company provides space for your website. The more space you have the more information you can upload to your site.
Hosting companies: Yahoo Small Business http://www.yahoo.com/, IPowerWeb.com at http://www.ipowerweb.com/, GeoCities www.geocities.com.
3rd Design your page. You have online web design programs such as frontpage or dreamweaver. Again, most hosting companies, give you templates and easy to use "what you see is what you get" editors. If you do not have the patience or the time to design a webpage for your home based web business, then you can hire a professional or a resourceful amateur from www.craigslist.org or www.elance.com
4th. Promote your retail site. is not enough just to create a website, you need to be actively promoting your site. The following is a partial list of your marketing camping for your home based web business:
1.-List your website on major search engines
2.- Optimize your website "Keywords" so your website is more relevant for searches.
3.- Pay for some online advertising, either, addiliate, banner, adwords, etc.
4.- Online Networking, make relationships with other webmasters who do not directly compete with you but provide a related product, service or information that complements your own
5.- Create related websites (such as blogs) in order to get consumer feedback (which is extremely valuable for your home based web business)
Now that we have created a website (many host provide you with good tools to create your website) now lets see the business opportunities on the web.
For your home based web business, many companies are creating opportunities that are accessible and easily to implement even for novice web users.
Lets start from your presentation
Your website should be easy to navigate and the reader with a simple look have to be able to see all that you have to offer. Remember that with so many options available on the web, having somebody stay and look around your retail store to find out what you sell or what you do, it’s a bit of wishful thinking, and a waste of your time. Look at the http://www.zappos.com/ website, they are an online retailer of shoes, as soon as you come into the website you know what they do, and what they have available (considering that they have a huge selection)
The consumer should also get enough assurances that you are a well to do business and that you offer guarantees, like money back, trial period, client’s testimonials, etc. Many businesses that sell information online rely on these guarantees (although some many not live up to them) because they build trust with the costumers. The more guarantees that you offer the better you look in the eyes of the costumers (remember, though, that there are economics to all this, so offer reasonable guarantees that wont make you loose money). A good way of getting implicit trust is by being referred through a third party unbiased party. Those are difficult to do but it will do wonders for your business, not only because you get the recommendation but also because you tap into a new pool of readers increasing your product or service exposure. It may be reasonable to do a deal with this party (I know is not going to be unbiased) in order for this party to help you promote your products.
Now you have established who you are and what you do, you need to establish value for your consumer. The question that you need to ask yourself is: why would they buy from me? In here you have to convey to the costumer what is the advantage of your product or service over your competitor, is it quality, design, price, service, etc. What you offer in here is what makes you different from your competitors. This is your identity and what (in the mind of the consumer) is your product or service will be associated for your home-based web business.
This is all “front office” stuff, meaning; this is the image that you will show to your costumers. However, for the sake of discussion I am going to assume that you already know how you are going to distribute, secure a supplier for your product, and have set up all the mechanisms to receive payment and get consumer feedback. If not I would recommend reading information on “drop shipping”, (meaning the supplier ships directly to the consumer so you will not have to hold inventory), Paypal, so you can collect payments, and setting up space on the website to get feedback from your costumers.
I understand that the aforementioned is a lot of work; there is an easier way to do this (it has its advantages and disadvantages)
Easy way to set up your home based web business:
There are websites such as cafepress.com that allow you to set up virtual retail stores for free (if you want a more professional looking one, or one that you can link back to your website and incorporate to the user interface, then you will have to pay a nominal fee) Many webmaster currently use them to sell extra products from their website (cafepress does t-shirts and other impressions on commercial products)
There are already set up online marketplaces where you can sell your products, such as Ebay, this gives you the advantage of being part of an already set up system that allows easy access to costumers and requires low technical expertise to get started.
Internet malls, some of this companies for a fee allow you to set up a site with their under their umbrella selling their products or the products of others, gaining a commission. Internet malls offer ready set up websites that you need to market and distribute. Note that since this is an easy business model to acquire, the competition for selling to costumers is rather steep.
Affiliate programs, in this case you become a virtual reseller of other people’s products. By entering into a reseller agreement, you will get commissions from sales made for your affiliate. All you need to do is sign up with the affiliate marketer, get your id, and put their link into your website.
Drop-Shipping companies, it allows people to sell other people’s product without carrying inventory. They either have a pre-fabricated website or you can add your catalog to yours. Remember due to the easy of entry into these programs you are going to experience strong competition.
This should give you a couple of ideas on what for online retail business. One of the most important things to remember is that success in the internet retailing will depend on traffic, the more traffic that your website builds the better. Think of it as opening an actual retail store in a main street in your town. Many people will walk around your store and peruse your items, but only a fraction will buy them. The higher the number of people looking through your store (in this case your web retail business) the higher the chances of them buying something. ¶ 12:49 PM 1 comments
