Cool Consortium

The Internet represents the most powerful communication
revolution since the dawn of mankind.

Its communication power can literally create business
empires faster and with less startup capital than in all
human history.

Yet, with all this power at their fingertips, it amazes me
that most businesses and entrepreneurs will put their
business in jeopardy just to save a couple of bucks.

Would you build a luxury home on a foundation made for a
double-wide trailer?

Would you mount a race car body and engine on a chassis
built for a go-cart?

If not, then why would you try to build a legitimate online
business to support your family and contribute to your
livelihood using $4 a month hosting?

It doesn’t make sense, but people do it every day and,
unfortunately, the consequences can often cost you a
hundred times or more of what you “saved.”

When you go to choose a web host, you need to think in
terms of the purpose for your website(s).

If you want a little family site or a non-commercial blog,
then $5 a month hosting may be just what you need.

If you want to host a basic, but dependable website to sell
your own, or someone else’s products, then plan on $9-20 a
month, depending on how much hand-holding you need from
your web host’s technical support staff.

If you want to host multiple sites to generate search
engine traffic, sell your own products online, and get a
moderate amount of traffic, then plan to spend $15-$50 a
month, depending on which options you choose.

If you plan to operate a serious e-commerce site and need
the flexibility to grow, then a dedicated server for $100-
$200 a month may fit the bill.

When evaluating a web host, keep the following in mind.

Will you run scripts on your website?

If yes, then make sure the web host offers a cgi-bin and
mysql database. Those allow you to run almost any kind of
script you’ll need on a basic to intermediate level site.

Will you have your own “dedicated IP address?”

All domain names correspond to an IP address, which is just
a series of numbers.

Just like a phone number dials up the correct phone
anywhere on earth, each domain has its own number.

However, depending on how your host sets up their server,
your domain can actually share an IP address with dozens,
even hundreds, of other websites.

If one of those websites misbehaves, it can adversely
affect everyone on that same IP address.

My advice: pay a little extra to make sure you get your own
dedicated IP.

How much space will you need?

Make sure you get at least 100 megabytes of space from your
web host.

Also, make sure you get at least 10 email forwarding
accounts and 10 gigabytes of data transfer per month.

Also, the hosting market is so competitive now that you
should never pay a setup fee.

If in doubt, shop around, compare and always ask someone
you trust or check up on what others have to say about a
specific hosting service by visiting sites like
http://www.webhostingtalk.com

The moral here?

Understand that your web hosting account is literally the
“foundation” for your online business, so don’t skimp.
You’re only hurting yourself in the long run if you do.

© Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved – http://www.thenetreporter.com

About the Author:

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to
use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted
visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Simple “Traffic Machine” brings Thousands of NEW visitors to
your website for weeks, even months… without spending a
dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

There was a time not long ago when setting up a website meant endless technical jargons, hiring a web designer, writing the html or jawa codes, selecting the right hosting platform and deciding on the band width.

Now setting up a website is like 1..2..3.. and you are online. You don’t need to a technical geek anymore. Let me teach you how to do it. And right now.

You can be online in minutes. Without spending a dime.

O.K. Let us start.

The first thing you need to decide is the subject of your website. Decide on a specialized area or a narrow theme. Do not make it a very general website. A niche site has better chance of being found by people with specific keyword search. You can start a site to share your specialized knowledge or special products or just give free information in the area of your specialization to establish yourself as an authority.

Once you have decided on the subject of your site give it a name targeted to convey your subject. If you are a training consultant, your website should be named training.com. You can make it more focused. If you specialize in communication training you can name your site commmunicationtraining or commiunication-training.

Having decided on the most important aspect of deciding on a name, now we can proceed to the next step. That of actually setting up the site.

Open a new browser window on your desktop. Enter www.blogspot.com . You may also click on www.blogspot.com and a new browser window will open up.

Click on the arrow’Create Your Blog Now’ and a new page will open for account sign up. Enter the name chosen for as described above in the column user name and chosen names along with other particulars such as your desired passwords as required in the sign up form. Finally check the terms of service box. Click on the Continue arrow.

Fill in the blog title and the web URL in the columns. Once the chosen name is available and accepted you will be directed to the template page. Here you have a choice of a dozen templates. You can always change the look of your web if you don’t like the looks or you may want to give a new look to your site anytime.

Now your web site is created and online. You can start posting. It is easy. All you need do is type out or cut paste the matter you want to post to your site and click publish.

The blogger program is very user friendly with help available if you get stuck anywhere. Use it and over a period of a week you will be an expert webmaster.

Are you online yet?

Srinivasan is a Management professional, Writer and Author. You can view his home-business resources blog at http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com for online marketing tips, resources, opportunities and online promotional strategies.

Many affiliate programs usually provide special web pages for
their affiliates. This is one of the reasons why it may appear
very strange, at first, that most top affiliates and the high
earners from affiliate programs will most certainly always have
their own websites, complete with their own domains specifically
for promoting a certain affiliate program that they are involved
in.

Why should these affiliates spend the extra money for a website,
and even a domain name that both come with their own heavy
demands when they already have so much visibility already
through an affiliate program website? Actually there are a
number of reasons.

Having your own website and
domain will tend to attract more traffic than an affiliate
site

A domain is bound to attract much more traffic than a long
affiliate address. When surfers see what looks like a registered
domain name, they will tend to take the site much more seriously
than if they were to see the rather long affiliate website
address. The affiliate can even ensure that they select a name
that will be quickly picked up by search engines to give the
site a high ranking.

It is possible to carefully
monitor where the traffic is coming from

One of the major weaknesses of the vast majority of ordinary
affiliate websites lies in the fact that it is not possible to
analyze traffic and establish exactly where it is coming from.
You would need to install some code and most affiliate sites do
not give access to codes of the pages that they supply to their
affiliates. The result is that folks are forced to operate
blindly. Even as they instigate various advertising methods to
get traffic to their sites, there is really no way they can
track their visitors.

One of the most effective Internet marketing methods calls for
the constant analysis of your traffic to establish where they
have come from. The idea here is to find further ways and means
of reaching that particular market niches. In this way you will
find that your site traffic is constantly on the increase.

It becomes possible to harvest email
addresses

With your very own affiliate website, it becomes a lot easier
to collect names and email addresses from visitors to the
affiliates independent website. It is usually not possible to do
this from an affiliate website. When you do not do this, you
fail to make efficient and maximum use of the leads you generate
through your website and from all the marketing efforts you make
to attract traffic. A person harvesting email addresses and
building an opt-in email list is bound to make much more sales
from lower traffic than a person with a much larger volume of
traffic who does not build an opt-in email list.

It has been established that buyers usually need to be exposed
to any product or service that you are advertising, several
times before they can make a decision to buy. Emails are a great
way to do this, and the only legal way to send out mass email is
through permission marketing of using safe lists or your very
own opt-in email list. This is a list of persons who have opted
in to receive the latest updates and developments. This is
naturally the more effective option.

There are various ways of harvesting email addresses from
regular visitors to your affiliate website. You can offer an
amazing free e-course or offer to send them some free
fascinating software in return for their email address that you
can then use to market to them again and again. It really is not
surprising that top affiliates and top earners from affiliate
programs insist on having their own websites and domains.

Choosing The Wrong Server Will Literally Make Or Break You

by: Rich Hamilton

Choosing the right web server will be one of the most important decisions you will ever make with your online business. Why? Because the web server you choose will literally make or break your online business.

Today I am going to talk about two types of servers, one is Virtual Web Hosting and the other is Virtual Private Servers.

Over the last couple of years Virtual Web Hosting has been the only way to go when choosing a web server. One of the reasons that Virtual Web Hosting became so popular was because they supported the necessary files and allowed you to have more freedom than other conventional web hosts. But now you can have more freedom than ever before with Virtual Private Servers. Moreover, Virtual Private Servers should not be confused with Virtual Hosts, because they are completely different.

Before I go any further I must explain what the difference is between a Virtual Host and a Virtual Private Server, so that you can fully understand. In this article I will also go over the advantages and disadvantages of both types of servers, to help you decide which is right for you and your business. Let’s get started with Virtual Hosting.

Virtual Hosting

Virtual Hosting is also known as Shared Web Hosting, where you are sharing the physical server and a single set of software applications with other users. Virtual Hosting has been extremely popular in the past for it’s fast deployment, strong resources, and most importantly for having a very reasonable price. Another advantage to Virtual Hosting is that you have a powerful, reliable, and professionally managed server without having to have advanced technical skills, making it ideal for an individual, small business, or even a beginner webmaster.

The disadvantage of Virtual Hosting is that you are sharing the server with other users, which are configured and controlled by an administrator, not you. So basically you have your hands tied behind your back, because you have to contact the administrator everytime you have to adjust or change your configuration settings. Even if you managed to get a hold of the administrator, they may not fulfill your request. It’s up to them, they are the administrator. If you were the administrator you wouldn’t have these limitations and would have full control.

Virtual Private Servers

Virtual Private Servers are a hot topic these days and for a good reason. Before I get into the advantages of a Virtual Private Server, let explain what it is first. A Virtual Private Server is a single server that is partitioned at the root into multiple dedicated servers. This allows you to share the cost of the network connectivity, hardware, and system maintenance with other hosting customers, while maintaining your flexibility and freedom.

The real advantage of Virtual Private Servers is that they allow you to have complete control and they have the security advantages of a dedicated server at the fraction of the cost. You have access to the virtual root, Telnet, web configuration files, and full CGI-BIN access. I can’t forget to mention that you also have access to your password, aliases file, and sendmail configuaration file. For many reasons you can see that a Virtual Private Server is an excellent solution for small to medium size businesses that have an increasingly complex needs.

Moreover, there is one disadvantage with Virtual Private Servers, you need to have some program knowledge to control and configure the settings. Sounds overwhelming, most businesses that offer Virtual Private Servers have very detailed manuals making them easier to configure and control no matter what your program level is.

Which one is right for you? Well, that all depends on you and the size of your network.

If you have or plan on having just one web site and have absolutely no programing knowledge, then Virtual Hosting is the recommended and economical way for you to go. A Virtual Host can cost anywhere from $20 – $50 a month for an account, rather than a $100 or more for a Virtual Private Server.

On the other hand, if you have a larger network that requires multiple web sites, like ours, and you have some programing knowledge, then a Virtual Private Server is ideal for you. You can host up to 50 web sites on a Virtual Private Server account, instead of having multiple Virtual Hosting accounts, which is not as economical.

When it comes time to get a web server, make sure that the server fits your needs and that it supports the essential software for a prosperous online business.

Rich Hamilton Author of: “Inside Internet Marketing” www.InsideNetMarketing.com

HostingChecker.com – help for all your web hosting needs.

Article may be republished if this portion is not removed.

Perhaps your web hosting company has a technical support group that never answers their email, or their control panel is difficult to use. Maybe your website has been having more downtime than uptime. Whatever the reason you are thinking of switching hosts, make sure you have your ducks in a row before making the move.

Here are five things to think about as you transition your website:

1. Make sure you have all of your website’s information backed up on a disc or cd. This way you can be assured that nothing gets destroyed in the move.

2. Shop around for your new web hosting company. Look to make sure they meet your needs and to make sure that you won’t run into any of the problems that you had with your old company. Don’t be afraid to email or call them and ask as many questions as you need to ask.

3. Once you have chosen your web hosting company, upload your website (or websites) and check to make sure that everything is working as it should.

4. Change your Domain Name Server so that your web address is now pointing to the website with the new host.

5. Once you are sure that all traffic and email is going to the newly hosted website, you can now cancel your old hosting account. Keep in mind that this can take a few days or more.

About The Author

Stacy Tabb is the publisher of http://www.aa-cheap-web-hosting.com, a website focused on resources for both personal and ebusiness websites to include hosting, templates, domains, personal web pages, and ecommerce hosting.

Is your business going well? Or do you think your business is competitive? Well, if not, then you better think of a good solution to your problem and maybe one of them is by conducting business communications and transactions over the networks and through computers. This is often known as e commerce or electric commerce.

Setting up and managing an online business does have several advantages over setting up a normal or local business. You can usually scamper it in union with your present job, your probable market is larger your primary expenditures are usually smaller and you can control it from the comfort of your own home.

Once you decided that you want to enter into the world of E-commerce you may think that you still need to take a lesson for building your own website, right? There are also some people who think that building a website is easy as baking a pie. But they often end up finding out that it’s really difficult. But this is wrong.

Building an e-commerce system is a complex method and it needs an e commerce website builder who knows the ins and outs of building secure systems. Constructing an e-commerce system comes with the possibility for a lot of errors and it is advisable to find security and database experts for the job.

A website builder will be happy to build an e commerce web site for you. There are many advantages in using or hiring a website builder.

First, you can find a website builder that can arrange your products into logical categories and subcategories, without overdoing it. By arranging your products, you can overwhelm your potential customers and make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.

A website builder will also make sure that your products have clear and high-quality pictures. They can also help you make short and detailed specifications of your products. If necessary an e commerce website builder can help you add video or pictures of different view points along with the product specification. An e commerce website builder can take of all the resource consuming tasks such as order and supply tracking and make them automated. Automating such resource consuming tasks may help you manage your website better.

You can also use or hire an website builder in order to create automatic billing, invoice handling, accounting, and report generation tools making your e commerce web site easier to manage and handle in terms of sales.

An e commerce website builder can also help you use security systems like SSL also known as, Secure Socket Layer, which can guarantee that the data provided by your customer will not fall into the hand of a malicious hacker while transferring from his computer to the web server.

With these security systems, a website builder can help you in reassuring your customers that you are truly concerned about the security of their personal information.

There are still a lot of things that an e commerce website builder can help you with. And if you already decided to use or hire an e commerce website builder you can find them at the internet. You may also ask for some referrals from people you trust like your friends, family members, or neighbors.

Before you can publish in Dreamweaver, you must set up a “home base” folder where your website will live on the local hard drive of your computer. Once this is in place, you can use Dreamweaver’s FTP feature to “get” and “put” the HTML files from your local folder to the remote server. Here’s how to set it up for a BASIC website that does not include PHP, .asp or any “dynamic” elements.

Open Dreamweaver.

Go to the top menu and click SITE, then NEW SITE

The prompt will ask you for a name. Name it “Whatever Your Site’s Name Is” (you can space this – it’s like a title bar, not a domain.)

Next Prompt: Do you want to work with a server technology?

Your Answer: NO

Next Prompt, Question 1: How do you want to work with your files?

Your Answer: Option 1

Question 2: Where on your computer do you want to store your files?

Your Answer: (Here, you will set up a folder hierarchy. Your heirarchy might be, C:/Your Websites/Name of Website

Next Prompt: How do you connect to your remote server?

Your Answer: FTP

Now it will ask you the following questions:

What is the hostname or FT address of your Web server?

Your Answer: This will vary. Typically, it’s ftp.whateveryourwebsitenameis.com (starts with ftp, a period, and then a domain name dot-com. The domain name could be your own domain name, or it may also be the domain name of your hosting provider. You may want to search for the term ‘FTP’ in your host’s help instructions so you know exactly what address to enter here.)

What folder on your server do you want to store your files in?

Your Answer: typically the answer to this is htdocs, but you have to figure out where your main HTML files are stored on your server. (I know that in Earthlink the folder is called webdocs).

What is your FTP login:

Your Answer: whatever your website login is

What is your FTP password:

Your Answer: whatever your password is

Now check off “save” and then click TEST CONNECTION to make sure you’re hooked up. If you can’t connect, recheck the above information and repeat the process.

Next Prompt: Do you want to enable checkin and checkout?
Your Answer: NO

(This is up to you. If you have multiple designers on your team, then checkin and checkout could be a good way of preventing file versions accidentally overriding each other. If you work alone, just say NO.)

Note:

If you screw this up for some reason or want to change anything, go back up to the top menu, click SITES again and select EDIT. you’ll see the name of your website (whatever you named it in Step 1) listed and you can repeat this same process.

To use the FTP in Dreamweaver, just go to the far right hand window where it says DESIGN, CODE, APPLICATION, FILES all stacked vertically. Hit the arrow where FILES is located to open up the little FILES window.

Note: if you don’t see any far right window, you may have chosen the alternate view when you first launched the program. In this case, go to the TOP MENU BAR and click SITE and then SITE FILES. A floating window should open up that you can drag anywhere beside your main window.

In the FILES window, you’ll see a little pulldown menu where you can opt to view your server files.

Next to that pulldown is another pulldown menu that says REMOTE VIEW. By default, you’re looking at the server (as opposed to your local computer folders, which is another choice in this pulldown).

Just beneath the word FILE in that FTP window, you see a little icon that looks like a plug with a black dot next to it (far left). Click that and it’ll “connect” you and the dot will turn green, for “GO Dreamweaver!”

To open a file from your desktop, mouse away from the FTP window and go to the *usual* place in any program where you’d open a file. (Top menu bar, far left, FILE.)

Open the file from the folder where it’s located on your computer. Edit the file.

When you’re done editing the file, go back to the FTP window on the right, that you just set up. Make sure you’re connected (that dot next to the plug doohickey should be green. If it’s black, click the plug icon again to connect).

To transfer the file from your local desktop to the remote server, do this:

Mouse away from the FTP window again, and back to your open file. Focus your gaze TOP CENTER. Next to the TITLE bar there are two arrows, a green “down arrow” and a blue “up arrow.”
To PUT the file on the remote FTP server, click the BLUE UP ARROW.

(The blue UP arrow stands for PUT or PUBLISH from your computer to FTP server)

(The green DOWN arrow stands for GET or retrieve your file from the FTP server to your computer)

Later on, you may want to open the file directly from the FTP server and edit it.

So, go to the FTP window and click the icon to connect to your server again. The list of files should appear.

Find the name of the file you want to edit, and while still in that mini File window, click the name of the file once (to highlight). Then click ‘FILE’ and ‘OPEN’. (this is all done in the little FTP window, not the main window).

Now your file will open up in the main (big) window. Edit it, and then click that BLUE ARROW by the center TITLE BAR to PUT or publish it again.

NOTE: if you click the blue arrow located in the little FTP window, it will PUT the ENTIRE SITE from your desktop to your server.

If you’ve already edited and put some files but not others, this will mess your stuff up royally. Why?

Because it’ll take the files from your computer and replace the “most updated files on your remote server” with the old ones from your local folder, thereby deleting your work. I have done this by accident and it is no fun.

If you know that all the files on your server are the *correct* ones but the ones on your desktop are the *old* ones, you can *get* the files from the server by clicking the GREEN DOWN arrow in the little FTP window on the right.

This will replace every file on your hard drive with the same named files from your server.

If you royally mess up something, but as you remember it, the last file that you PUT (or published) is still live on the web, you can type in that file name in your internet browser and then do a VIEW SOURCE, copy the HTML code, and paste that back into the file on your hard drive, Save, and then PUT it again.

Generally, it’s a good idea to work from your local folders and then PUT the entire site (in the FTP window) all at once. But I am a jerk and I don’t do it that way.

Good luck, and happy FTPing, getting and putting!

Copyright 2006 Dina Giolitto, Wordfeeder.com Copywriting and Marketing Services for the Web

Your customers are irate and your marketing guy just doesn’t GET the new software. What happened? Your web copy isn’t getting the message across. Visit Dina at http://Wordfeeder.com and discover how a copywriter with over a decade of experience will lend that professional edge that will put you at the forefront of your industry and eliminate the confusion in your copy.

Upset with your online sales? Tired of looking for reasons why you continuously fail with your online business no matter what you do? Then, it is time for you to do some shaking. You have to loosen up in order to realize that in spite of the many efforts that you have tried, there are only three reasons why you are not making any sales online.

If you are not making any sales as you have wished it to be, in spite of the many hocus-pocus techniques you have tried, it is almost certainly down to three reasons only: not enough traffic, wrong type of traffic, no customers just visitors.

What do these three reasons mean? Well, first let me tell you that having a business online is not the same as what you have offline. Even if both involve money or financial matters, they are entirely different from each other.

With online business, you do not need the usual type of marketing strategies being applied by the typical business. What matters most in online business is the kind of traffic your web site should use in order to entice people to visit your website and buy your product.

Do you think it is that simple? Guess again.

There are many ways on how to derive traffic to your website but the probability of succeeding is left to nothing if you have employed the wrong kind.

Therefore, for people who wish to know more why they are failing, or why it is important to employ the right kind of traffic in a web site, here are some pointers that you need to know:

1. If you are not getting adequate traffic in your web site, then it only means one thing: no visitors. And, if you do not have any visitors on your site, then, there would be no sales.

2. If you are targeting for the wrong traffic, the results will be the same. The notion no visitors means no sales does not necessarily mean that you have to have any kind of visitors in order to have sales. Indeed, sales are derived from your visitors but getting the wrong ones is just the same problem.

Hence, it is important to have the right target market.

3. However, having visitors, even if it is the right target market will not immediately be converted into sales if you do not know how to turn them into customers. There are instances that you may have many visitors but as soon as they have reached your site, they no longer feel the need to buy your product.

So, what do these three problems mean? It means that you are employing the wrong marketing strategies; hence, you are failing online.

The problem with most people who have online business is that they just immediately start their venture without considering the different factors that will contribute to their sales performance.

So, for people who wish to change their status online, here are some tips that can help you through:

1. Convert your visitors into customers.

You can do this by encouraging impulse purchases on your visitors. Create a buy now phenomenon by placing relevant articles on your site, timing it right, make the registration relatively easy, give some discounts or freebies, and create an atmosphere that would tell them what they are missing if they will not buy your product now!

It is a simple fact. What you need on your site are customers and just visitors, so it would be better that whoever enters your site would really buy your product.

2. Always go for the major and well-known directories and search engines.

The important thing is people should know your business do exist and that they will benefit a lot form your business. It is just a matter of getting public attention. Even if you have the best product in the world but nobody is aware of it, then, everything will just be put to waste.

3. Create a highly targeted mailing list or opt-in list

These mailing lists will definitely be a big help. Of course, you wouldnt want your customers to be one-time buyers only, right? So, that means you have to keep them posted of your business and keep them on the hook. In this way, there will be higher probabilities that they will keep coming back to you, especially if they were satisfied with your product.

Indeed, there are no justifiable reasons to fail online because there are many ways to succeed. You just need a little more education and techniques that will truly help you achieve your targeted sales.

Why we made Romanticdesktops – Part 1

Desktop designs generally mean – wallpapers and screensavers. The Internet offers a big range of this content. How to make a new website for screensavers and wallpapers and how to create an identity of that to make it look different. How to make the offering good for the visitors? These are the questions that I will attempt to answer in this article.

The Uniqueness -

Most of the screensavers and wallpapers on the net are nature themed. Most of the content on offer has no text. But desktop designs are seen by the user of the computer many times a day while working. How about offering designs incorporating text? That was the first thought before making of RomanticDesktops.com. To focus on wallpapers or screensavers – was the second question. And how to create appealing designs that are downloaded was the third question.

If you download the wallpaper Download Page Link you will get answers to two of the three previous questions. A beautiful pink flower in video shot swinging in love on the right side of the design, with a wallpaper background in black and a green strip running horizontally on the design with text that says – When I shed tears when I miss my love, the tears that I shed are the most precious of all. The third question about to focus more on screensavers or wallpapers will be discussed later in this article.

More about designing -

Most of the video shots used on this site are of flowers, ocean, waterfalls, jungle and mountain scenes, sunsets etc. The background colors used in wallpapers are carefully chosen so that they don’t disturb the normal use of the icons on the desktop. The text is mostly placed on the right side and we have tried to say a lot in few words. The overall attempt has been to offer wallpapers that are not only downloaded , but are kept on the desktops. They not only enhance the looks of the desktop ,but also make the user go in a romantic mood. This is how we have tried to differentiate this offering from that commonly available on the net.

The wallpapers have been divided in five broad themes -

Love Flowers

Love Hearts

Life In Love

Love Thoughts

Romantic Scenes

We will discuss more about the layout, the text, the designs, difference between designs of screensavers and wallpapers etc. in the coming part of this article.

For many business areas, the Internet has set a new standard and changed the playing field. To take advantage, you need a site. But where do you start?

Web Sites…In The Beginning

Your first thoughts regarding a web site are guaranteed to be misplaced. If you have a current business you want to create a site for, you are viewing it using techniques you have developed in the brick and mortar world. If you have decided to start an entirely new business on the web, you are probably brainstorming about potential ideas. If you want to avoid wasting time and money as well as major frustration, you need to understand that both approaches are simply, utterly, truly wrong! Well, most of the time.

If you can accept that statement, you will avoid the mistakes millions of small and huge businesses have made. You don’t want to be like that frustrated person you met at some party who got killed on the web. As difficult as it will be, you must accept the fact you understand nothing about e-commerce. If you can check your ego and opinion at the door, you are half way to making profits. Assuming you haven’t hit the back button, let’s talk about the key issue.

There is one word to memorize if you want to have a successful site – Research. Don’t worry, it isn’t difficult to do. Imagine if you could find out what all the people in your city think of when they have a problem your business can solve? Imagine you new the exact phrases they thought of most often. The information would be worth more than its weight in gold. Far more. On the web, you can get this information.

The most important step you, I or any other person will take in starting a site is first determining if we should! To let the cat out of the bag, there are more than a few industries that don’t do well on the web. The business just doesn’t translate well or people prefer to touch the product or talk to the person. Wouldn’t you hate to spend thousands of dollars or a couple hundred hours working on a site only to find out there is no interest on the web? It would be maddening, not to mention putting macaroni and cheese front and center in your diet.

The best way to deal with this issue is to use a site called Wordtracker. Wordtracker is a brilliant, cheap program. You enter a keyword, click and it tells you all the phrases being used in searches that include that keyword. It also tells you how many searches occur for each keyword phrase in a 24 hour period. Do you realize the value of that?

Assume you have an existing business that sells purple balloons for weddings. You are budgeting a bunch of time or money to have a site built. Having read this article, you go to Wordtracker and do a test for “purple balloons.” You find out there are only 50 total searches a day for all possible keyword phrases. You now know the site isn’t worth pursuing. Unlike most businesses, you’ve saved a lot of money and a lot of time.

Large and small businesses have crashed and burned on the Internet because they never took the time to figure out if there was a market for their product or service. Now we know you aren’t going to make the same mistake.

Halstatt Pires is an internet marketing consultant with MarketingTitan.com. Visit us to read more Internet marketing articles.