Doing business these days often means you must have a successful online presence. Now that it is possible to reach a global market, those who add a shopping website to enhance the sales from a physical storefront, include social media in their advertising, or want to do business entirely online, you find you must compete with hundreds of other merchants peddling the same or similar wares.
Some people are just better at it than others, which is why your competition might be raking in the dough while your website sits and languishes for lack of attention. There are five things that people often overlook in their online marketing, and it’s possible you may be committing one of these mistakes.
How to Make Money on The Internet Easily
1. No Visual Interest. It doesn’t matter if you are selling items on an auction site like eBay or you have your own website: getting and keeping a customer’s eye in the first few milliseconds is absolutely crucial. The lack of a picture will send most potential buyers scurrying without a second glance. Almost as bad as no picture at all is a very bad one. Poorly lit, badly focused, and obviously done with a point-and-shoot in the hands of someone with no photography experience whatsoever, bad pictures scream low quality and sloppiness. No one wants to purchase anything from a seller who obviously doesn’t care about the item enough to showcase it at least a little. Even if you are selling something on eBay and don’t need a professional photographer to come in for a photo shoot, only post a picture that is clear, well-lit, and detailed enough for a buyer to see what it is, what its condition is, and that you have taken tender care of it in order to pass it on to a new, loving owner.
Website owners should seriously consider hiring a professional website design company. The internet is littered with poorly designed websites. Bad layout, ill-advised colors, poor picture quality, and badly written text all testify to the amateur status of the owner. A buyer will quickly go somewhere else and buy from a website that looks professional, when given a choice. If you are selling anti aging skin products, for example, you would probably choose soothing, calm colors. Neutral beige, soft greens, and ocean blues, for instance, are all colors people usually associate with relaxation, spas, and nature, all of which subconsciously tell your customer that your products are safe and natural and that they will feel good wearing them. Accompany the soothing colors with great photographs of people with dewy, youthful skin, some well-written, understandable web text that also answers the scientific questions as to why your product is better than anyone else’s, and an easy way to purchase your product, and you will succeed far better than a site that features hot pinks and oranges (colors associated with heat and illness), a few blurry photos, a bunch of blinky, sparkly buttons, and a badly written explanation of your product and why you cook it up in the comfort of your own kitchen.
Without a great visual experience as soon as the customer clicks to your item or website, you’ll send buyers fleeing somewhere else.
2. Too Much or Too Little Text. Although I already touched on the importance of well-written text in the last section, you must understand that the words you choose to put into your listing or on your website can make or break a sale. After a great visual experience has enticed your customer to look further at what you have to offer, you can still ruin a sale with too many words or too few. A home page with enough text on it to be a novel is not what a buyer wants to see. The selling points of your item should be bulleted for easy perusal, and there should be just enough information to explain what it is you are selling and why the customer should buy. Other pages in your website can go into more detail about the item(s), who you are, and more about your company, but don’t put it all on the front page.
Conversely, unless your product is completely visual and is thoroughly explainable through a picture or two (highly unlikely), too little information is just as off-putting. Consider yourself as your customer, and make sure you answer the immediate questions you would have if looking to buy your product. Answering those questions on the front page or in your listing will help you communicate effectively with a buyer.
It should go without saying that a professional website with unedited, badly punctuated, and grammatically incorrect text is just a no-no. Sadly, it still needs to be hammered home.
3. Poor Internet Marketing Strategy. If you have a website, you have one of millions and millions. Your one little website against the weight of the world will not draw in even one person (maybe your mother, who loves you and wants you to do well) unless you can market it and get people to notice you.
This is where you begin to get educated, if you are not already, in the art of getting your website to show up in searches. Using bum marketing, keywords, SEO marketing, and other specialized strategies, you will begin drawing attention from those looking for what you have to offer. If you don’t know what those things are – and even if you do – your best bet is to hire a company that specializes in getting your website noticed by search engines and through good advertising. You can pass out fliers, buy commercial air-time, and tell all your friends, as well. That never hurts, of course; but to get business from people you can’t reach in those ways, you must develop a good internet marketing strategy.
4. Believing That Making Money Online is Quick and Easy. It isn’t the norm to be an internet millionaire. Sure, a few have managed to find a niche that explodes into untold wealth, but if every bright mind was rewarded that way, there would be a lot more people basking in the sun of the Caribbean after taking early retirement. Even those who became “overnight” millionaires probably worked long and hard behind the scenes before raking in the bucks.
The truth is, making money online is just as demanding as making it in an office or on a street corner hawking your wares. You can bring in some extra cash, of course, but to get to the point where you can stay at home and work your online business will take focus, determination, trial and error, and hard work. If you feel like giving up after a few hours of trying to figure out how best to market your product, you might need to get a desk job. The rewards of working for yourself, however, are often enough compensation to keep going. Just don’t think it’s a walk in the park. If someone is trying to sell you a “get rich quick” online marketing scheme, run very fast in the other direction.
5. Not Providing Great Customer Service. On eBay, your reputation as a seller counts big time. On a website, your customer might not have any information about how easy you are to work with until they do business with you. If you make it difficult for a buyer to buy from you, or if you balk at returning their money when you have provided a low quality product or service, your reputation will start getting smeared. Angry people tend to do something about it, whereas happy people might keep going on with their lives and never let you know how much they like what you offer. Providing great customer service will help you develop that word of mouth (or email of fingers, if we’re talking about evolving business practices) that will land you more business. It will also help you get great testimonials for your site!
Like many new business ventures, most people who start out to make big money on the internet won’t succeed if they are determined not to learn how to benefit from their experience and correct their mistakes. By getting an education, however, you can overcome these five common mistakes and get yourself that much closer to being the next big thing.
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