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Web Business Overview
by Tad Coffin
MediaTitan.com

So you've decided you'd like to go into business? Are you going to include a web site as part of your business? This article will give an overview of options that are available for your web business and will help to give you an idea of what goals should be set for your project. Topics include creating an Internet business plan, researching your business, getting web hosting, creating and maintaining a web site, and various forms of web marketing.

After deciding to pursue a web site, the next step is to create an Internet business plan. Internet business plans are as essential to a web entrepreneur as blueprints are to a construction worker. To build the most effective site, you must first be an architect and plan how you would like it to look, what it will do and how your goals will be accomplished.

There are many ways a person can go about making money with the Internet. Options include selling products as a wholesaler or retailer, selling services, promoting products or services as an affiliate partner, selling advertising, selling email or demographic information, selling subscriptions to sites and any number of other ways and combinations of money making ideas.

After you have a good plan for your site, the next step will be to research the market demand for your business service or product. Are people actually buying what you are selling? To find out, you could check stock of stores and Web sites, ask for friends' opinions and find more data online, in media, and at the library. If it turns out people are not buying much of what you are selling, now may be a good time to reassess how you will use your site. You may want to use the site as a basis for communicating with past clients instead of wasting money on marketing to potential customers that are not really looking for your service or product. An Internet site is an excellent communication tool for enticing former customers to buy again or send referrals. Also research the sites of your competitors to determine what they are doing and how you can improve on it.

After you have a plan and done some research, it is time to begin building your site. In order to have a web site one must have a host and a domain name. Think of the host as the home of your web site, and the domain, such as www.widgets.com, as its address. Domain names can often be registered for less than $15 per year. Media Titan offers several high quality hosting solutions, and there are hundreds more available. Free hosting is even available, but a user of such services is required to have the host's banners on their site, which is not particularly desirable.

A host should have reliable customer service and have very high "uptime", which means your site is accessible on the web as close to 100% of the time as possible. You don't want your host to crash if you get ten thousand visitors in one day. If you need programming or ecommerce, you will want to make sure your host will support your needs. Server stats are also very handy to track the amount of traffic you are getting and how you are getting it.

After you have a home and address for your web site, you will need to build it. There are two roads you can go down in this regard. Many web entrepreneurs choose to build their own sites and learn as they go. This is often desirable if you are interested in HTML and programming, have time to spare and don't require a professional polish. Many sites that make money promoting affiliate programs attract an audience that expect a rough, non-professional site to lead them to a polished sponsor site where they will spend their money.

The other road is to have a professional design your site for you. This is the best solution for many. Like a construction worker who knows the best way to build houses, can do it better and faster than the average layman, so it is with web design. If you are planning on selling a product or service directly, it is essential to have a sharp image by which your potential clients will judge you. With so much information and so many web pages available, surfers often move on after only a few seconds. A professional design, such as one by Media Titan, will ensure you will be making the most of each visitor that views your site.

Now you have a plan, a product or service and a web site to sell it with. This is very nice and all, but without people viewing your web site, you can't make any sales. You need a solid marketing plan to get the visitors to you site and converted into customers.

There are many ways to market a web site. One of the best ways is through search engines and directories. Search engines ensure pre-qualified traffic, meaning that if someone finds your site through a search engine, there is a good chance they are looking for the widgets you are selling, provided you've done your homework and optimized and submitted you site to search engines correctly.

There are several types of search engines and directories. A spider search engine uses programs called spiders to go around the web and collect data and bring it back to the engine. AltaVista is one such engine. You can submit your site to Alta Vista for free.

Then there are pay-per-click search engines, which require the site owner to pay for every click received from a list of search terms the site owner provides. Traffic can cost anywhere from a fraction of a cent to a few dollars per click on pay per click engines. Pay-per-click search engines are an excellent means for testing your site for effectiveness because you can quickly obtain targeted traffic. Depending on the profit of each sale, you may wish to pursue a major pay-per-click campaign to bring in business. Then there are the directories, such as Yahoo. These directors have reviewers that check submissions for quality and categorize them in folder-like branches of information. Directories such as Yahoo require a payment for listing, whereas other directories, such as DMOZ, do not. Some directories use a combination of human and spider review as well.

Another way to get traffic to your site is by trading links with other sites. A banner or text link is placed on your site to another relevant site, then you kindly request that a link to your site be placed on the site you have linked to. If you ask nicely, you just might get it.

Other methods of web promotion include web rings, banner exchanges, print advertising, banner advertising, TV and radio advertising and good old networking.

Now that you have a good plan, done some research, provided your service or product for all to see with a web site, and marketed your site to no end, there is nothing left to do but sit back and profit from the site. Until, of course, your competitors start moving in on your customers and you have to start the cycle all over again!

If you have further questions or would like Media Titan to assist you with building or marketing your site, please contact us - webmaster@mediatitan.com