The 3 things you need to do to have a successful online business

The P O P Method of Success
by Natalie Williams
http://www.SmallHostingPlans.com

There are 3 main things you need to do in order to be successful with an online business.

Prepare, Obtain & Promote

Prepare
You need to prepare and establish a website. This includes a domain name, hosting account, website pages , a shopping cart and a merchant account.
When you sign up with Small Hosting Plans, you receive a domain name for 2 years, website template, and a shopping cart that is already enabled to accept PayPal as your merchant account and Checks. You are also able to upgrade the cart if you would like to use any one of over 100 other merchant accounts that are available.

Obtain
You need to obtain products to sell on your site. There are 5 main ways that people and businesses acquire products that are sold on their websites. On my own websites, I do a mixture of all of the below.
Buy items in bulk at wholesale prices and then resell for a profit.

Cons: Usually the setbacks for this method are that a) people with small home-based businesses do not have the capital required to make large enough purchases to make a high profit and b) there is not space enough to store these large purchases in a person's home or small office.

Solution: The solution to this can be found in the "Light Bulk Wholesale Directory" found at http://www.successfulwahm.com/lbd/light-bulk.asp
This directory is filled with companies who will sell you smaller bulk, still at a wholesale price. This allows for you to make a profit and have room for the items in your home or office before they sell.

Also, this same company offers the Market Research Wizard which is simply an amazing tool to use when deciding if a particular product will sell or not online. They offer a free trail version, so I urge you to test it out.
Market Research Wizard can be found here:
http://www.successfulwahm.com/lbd/marketwizard.asp

Use Dropshippers to fill their website with products.  
Dropshippers are companies who will allow you to sell their products on your site and when a product sells, the customer pays you and you in turn place the order with the dropshipper and they ship the items directly to your customer. You can read more about dropshippers on the Dropshipping 101 website here: http://www.dropshipping101.com

Cons: People claiming to be dropshippers saturate the Internet offering to make you rich. These people are actually middlemen who will take your order and place it with the real dropshipper, keeping a portion of the money for themselves. These middlemen cut into your profits. One of the easiest ways to determine if they are a middleman is if they do not ask you for your Sales Tax Certificate. True wholesalers are required to obtain a resell permit from you before they can sell to you.

Solution:  The solution to this can be found in the "Dropship Source Directory" found here: http://www.successfulwahm.com/lbd/dropshipping.asp
This directory is filled with companies that will dropship, they require a tax certificate and will not charge you a fee for joining. The company that created this directory is very reputable, backed by the BBB Reliability Program and run by an honest group located in Orlando, Florida.
Also, be sure to get your Sales Tax Certificate. You can have the research for your business licenses completed for you here (http://www.newonlinebusiness.com/newonlinebusiness/business_licenses.asp) or do it all yourself with a little help in the right direction here (http://www.newonlinebusiness.com/newonlinebusiness/BusinessLicenses/General_Info.htm)

Join Affiliate Programs and place their products on your site

You can join the Affiliate Program of just about any company you can find online and promote the sales of their products. When you join the affiliate program, you are given a special link to their website that you place on your own site. When your website visitors click on these links, they are transported to the other companies website where they are free to purchase products. You make a commission on all sales. The difference between affiliate programs and using dropshippers is that with affiliate programs, you do not make the sale, collect the money, pack or ship anything. The main company handles everything. All you do is put the affiliate link on your site. With dropshippers, you sell the item, collect the money from the customer, put the order in with the dropshipper and then track to make sure the customer receives the item.

Cons: The only downside I've found to affiliate programs is that you need to occasionally check the links to make sure they still work. Sometimes a company will discontinue their program without informing the affiliates and you are left with dead links on your website. However, this is so few and far between that it shouldn't even be listed as a con.

Solution: Here is a nifty tool that will check for dead links in any web page you enter.
http://www.stickysauce.com/cgi-local/linkcheck/linkcheck.pl

Create and Sell your own physical products

The Internet has made it easy for anyone to create and sell their own products. Are you a woodsman who loves to make birdhouses? Can you make Barbie clothes? I believe everyone has something creative inside of them.

Cons:  You are one person. You will be limited to your physical capabilities and time-constraints of each day.

Solution: Well, I think they are close to successful human cloning =)

Create and Sell your own digital products

Everyone and their brother is selling eBooks with resell rights on the Internet these days.

There is one eBook that they are NOT selling and NEVER will sell?

Which one?? The one that YOU create.

People selling 10,000 eBooks for $9.95 on eBay are not striking it rich. The ones with their own website, creating the products themselves are.
Marlon Sanders, Yanik Silver, Rosalind Gardner to name a few. These people discovered early on the right way to own a business. The next time you see a digital product and you think about buying it, think instead how you could create it yourself. (Or one darn close to it). If you are like most people, you think you have nothing to write about or don't have the skills for creating. Wrong! I know a woman who was a DJ for her young adult life, but then relied on her wealthy husband to take care of her for many years. She has NO business experience. The time came when suddenly she had to make it on her own. She thought 'What am I going to do with no other skills but DJ'ing?". She wrote an eBook about DJ'ing, setting up for parties, the best lists of music to play at certain gigs, etc. She's not a millionaire, but she's done very well for herself.

Cons: You probably still don't believe you can do it so you will brush this topic off.

Solution: I am going to GIVE YOU a bonus right here and now that will help you achieve the above. It's called the Extreme eBook Creations package. It contains some eBooks you need to read, plus there is an eBook Creator Program yours for free. You can collect your bonus here.
http://www.cidicon.com/mydigitalproducts/ebookcreator/retrieve-products.htm

Promote
Now that you have your site all ready, millions of people will visit and you'll be rich overnight. Wrong again. If you build it, they will NOT come. In fact, not only will they not come, it sometimes seems like they go out of there way to stay away. Getting people to your website can be the most stressful, time-consuming, money-eating part of owning a website. But it doesn't have to break you. There are two ways to get people to your site. 1) Pay a load of money out to blast announcements all over the place 2) Spend the time to promote it yourself in free and almost-free ways. It always amazes me that someone will pay $10,000 to have a website built for them when they can have one made for so much less (or make it themselves) and then spend that money on the advertising. That is where your budget should be. Now I am not saying skimp and have a terrible site made. There IS a happy medium where you can have a professional, functional website without breaking the bank.
So what are these free and almost-free ways to promote?

Post on message boards. There is this one particular message board I am on all the time. I just answer questions and use my website link in my signature line and you wouldn't believe how much business I get from doing that.
I posted a message almost a year ago with my opinion on a particular online program that is popular and I STILL get emails to this day asking me more and they usually end up buying something from me.
Search on Google (http://www.google.com) for Message Boards along the topic of your website. For instance, if my website is about helping people work from home, I will look for message boards that have to do with "work from home moms".

Become an eBay seller. It doesn't matter what you sell on eBay, you can use your listings as a traffic driving tool. What you do is create a custom 'About Me' page on the eBay account. They give this page for free with every account. Then in every listing, place big links getting people to visit your 'About Me' page which will contain links to your website(s). My server logs show that the largest amount of traffic I receive to my website is through my 'About Me' page. If there is a month when I post just a few auctions, then I can guarantee you my websites sales are way down.

Open an eBay account
http://www.ebay.com

Help with About Me Page
http://www.AboutMyAuctions.com

Listing Code Generator
http://www.successfulwahm.com/sw/html-generator/about-me.asp

Look for websites and newsletters that compliment your website and offer to trade links or articles.
Browse Newsletters here:
http://pertinent.com/newsletters/

Write articles yourself and submit them to the appropriate websites. These websites offer articles written by members that visitors can read and more importantly, they can place these articles on their own website and newsletters which is circulated throughout the web. So your article (with your name and web address) is seen by thousands.
Browse Articles and Submit your own here:
http://www.goarticles.com

Write eBooks and do the same as above.
Here is a search on Google for "Submit Your eBook".
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=active&q=%22submit+your+eBook
Go through the websites and submit your free eBook everywhere that will take it.
Freebie mentioned above: Extreme eBook Creations
http://www.cidicon.com/mydigitalproducts/ebookcreator/retrieve-products.htm

Offer freebies on your site in exchange for the persons name and email address. It's very important to get a subscriber list going. You don't want to keep trying to get new customers everyday forever. If you come out with a new product, you will have your current customers to offer the product to first. What freebies should you offer? An eBook, a report, really anything that may be of interest to the types of visitors you receive.

Free Subscriber List
http://www.GetResponse.com/index/66513

Products you can use for freebies
http://www.MyDigitalProducts.com

Google AdWords. You apply for an account and then create little ads that appear to the right of the Google Search results and on other people's websites that use the keywords you choose. You determine how much you will pay per click and what your monthly budget will be so you are always in control of how much money you are spending on this advertising.
Google AdWords
http://www.google.com/adwords

There are a few more things you can do to generate income from your websites.
Google Ad Sense. You apply for an account and if they accept you (they DO turn people down), you can place some code on your website so that Google Ads will appear on your site. When your website visitors click these ads, you get money for every click. Due to the terms of agreement for their program, I cannot discuss how much I make from their ads, but I will tell you it's more than I thought I would and I am pleasantly surprised and happy every day.
Google AdSense
https://www.google.com/adsense

Place ads in your local newspaper about your product with your website address

Get free business cards from Vista Print and leave them around town. I place one of these in every single package I ship out for things I sell on eBay. I also ordered mailing labels but with just my business name and website address on them and I use them to close envelopes that I mail out.
http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=26298982&siteid=40122106&bfpage=text_link_5

If you're really in shape and have the stamina, create advertising doorknob hangers on your computer and walk around, hanging them on doorknobs.
http://www.aimforlove.com/shp/doorknob_hanger_example.htm

What is your site about? What is your product? You could probably convince stores to let you leave brochures or flyers about. For example, I began a secretarial service many years ago. I was allowed to leave my brochures on the counter of a computer repair shop. I received many customers this way and to this very day, I still have 2 great clients for who I perform secretarial duties from my home. The income from those 2 clients alone is enough to make me happy to stay home.

The End

Natalie Williams is a full time work from home mom that centers her business around helping other people, especially moms, work from home successfully and without being scammed.
Her main websites can be found at http://www.SmallHostingPlans.com and http://www.GettingStartedOnline.com
nwilliams@cidicon.com