Internet Marketing for Older Adults

Creating Profitable Websites

Making the Commitment to Building a Profitable Website

Commitment is a very important part of creating a successful money making website. While some people might like to think it’s easy to create a profitable money making website, the reality is it takes a lot of hard work, perseverance and most of all commitment. With the combination of all of these elements you can create a website that will generate all of the profits you are hoping to achieve. The harder you work and persevere the more successful your website will be. While it may seem unachievable in the beginning you have to remember it takes time to build a database of customers.

While you will always have to work to ascertain your website remains profitable, the most amount of work is in the beginning as you are attempting to bring everything together. After that you will still need to promote your website, but your marketing plan should already be in place. You will not need to identify your target audience; you will only need to continue promoting in order to assure more visitors to your website. This is a commitment you must make from the start or you will not be able to build a successful website.

Your commitment to building a profitable website should extend beyond just the initial building of your website but rather throughout the entire process of operating your business. The bigger your commitment the more profitable your business will be. This includes working with your customers, continuing your promotional efforts, ensuring you keep your website updated, and much more. Certainly some of these things will vary based upon the content on your website, but they will remain basically the same no matter what you are selling on your website.

Commitment is the more important component of a profitable website. If you do not commit to doing everything you need to do you will not achieve the level of success and profitability you are expecting. You will need to continue promoting your website in order to increase the number of visitors. You need to make sure your marketing plan is always up to date, making any adjustments that are necessary. Most importantly your website should always be up to date with any new products or services and pricing changes that are necessary. Your customers should be able to rely on your website for accurate information at any time.

Conduct Some Research Before You Begin

If you are contemplating building a money making website you should conduct some research before you begin. You want to research other money making websites in order to discover what they have in common and what makes them profitable. You don’t want to build a website and discover it has little potential for profitability because the market is saturated or you are attempting to reach the same target audience as others offering the exact same products or services. While the online global community is huge, too many people targeting the exact same target audience can create saturation. Make sure you can reach a different audience than others with the same idea.

It’s also important to understand how to operate a money-making website. It’s not as simple of just building and promoting it; you have to do an enormous amount of marketing in order to generate sales. If you have never operated a money-making website you need to gain some expertise either through training or experience. You want to make sure you know how to make your website profitable using one or more of the following methods:

  • Become educated in various marketing strategies
  • Learn how to identify your target audience
  • Become an expert in customer service
  • Know what your website visitors are seeking
  • Create a website that is easy to navigate
  • Choose products or services in which you have expertise or are willing to learn

It doesn’t matter if you are promoting products or services or recruiting for networking marketing; you still need to develop a marketing plan and gain an education in the areas you plan to present on your website. Anyone who attempts to create a money making website without conducting some research and gaining an education is setting himself or herself up for failure. Anything worth doing is worth doing right; learn everything you can about your opportunity before you attempt to market your website.

If you are signing up with a company for E-commerce, network marketing or affiliate marketing make sure you know about the company before you make a decision. Do not take their word about how much you can earn but rather look into the opportunity yourself—try talking to people who are involved with the organization in order to gain some unbiased information. Do not make a decision until you have all the information you need and feel confidant you are making the right choice.

Learn Your Market

Before you even begin setting up a money making website you need to ascertain you know the market. It’s important to know whether the products or services you are considering will be profitable—more importantly you need to know whether you will be able to create a website that will generate profits for that line of products or services. It’s easy enough to think you can create a profitable website, but it is another thing to actually do it. Do not assume because everyone is capable of becoming successful with the same idea or you are setting yourself up for failure.

One of the worst mistakes people make when they are attempting to start a home based business or become part of a networking scheme is thinking the world is their market. While it is true the global community has opened many different opportunities, that doesn’t mean everyone in the world is going to be interested in what you have to offer. You still need to identify your target audience in order to know not only whether you have something that will be of interest to web surfers but also to define where you want to direct your marketing efforts.

You also need to know your potential sales volume for what you plan to sell whether it’s products, services or a combination of both. Even if you are involved in network or affiliate marketing you are selling something: a program that will hopefully provide prospects with a better lifestyle and financial future. Everything you do involves sales of some kind, so if you want to create a profitable money making website you must take the time to conduct some research and determine your sales potential throughout the global marketplace.

If this is your first attempt with a money making website you need to make sure you develop some expertise before you begin setting up your website. While you could do this during the process it’s not a good idea; if you develop the expertise first you will be in a better position to know what you need to do as soon as your website goes live. You don’t want to take time to learn how to make money with your website when you should be promoting it and working to create more visitors and thus generate sales. Do your homework before you attempt to work on the project.

Developing a Successful Marketing Strategy

In order to have a successful website the first thing you need to do is to develop a successful marketing strategy. You need to promote your website to those who may have the most interest or need for what you are offering for sale. Whether you are selling products, services or money making opportunities you still need to have a plan for getting your message to your target audience. You don’t want to waste time and effort by randomly choosing targets you think “might be” interested. You will be more successful in your marketing efforts if you take the time to develop a marketing strategy rather than beginning without any kind of plan.

Why is it so important to identify your target audience? Wouldn’t the law of averages help you reach more people? While those statements may seem sound and lead you to believe in their validity, quite the opposite is true. When you take the time to identify your target audience you will promote your business only to those who are most likely to be interested. Case in point: you live in Hawaii and sell surfboards. Would it be any advantage to promote your website to people living in Alaska? While you may pick up a few sales from those planning to go on vacation, the potential is minimal. The law of averages is not going to help you unless you reach those who have a need or desire for what you are offering.

You do not want to go in blindly when you begin to promote your website. Before you are ready for business you need to take the time to develop a plan—don’t just sit down and start randomly promoting your website. This is important because only when you develop a plan first can you identify your target audience. In fact, before your website goes live you should already have a marketing plan in place and have begun marketing efforts.

Once your website goes live you should have nothing left to do on your initial efforts except to get the word out to potential customers that your website is ready for business. Your next marketing plan should focus on bringing in additional customers or prospects but still within the scope of your target audience. While some of your efforts may reach those outside of your target audience, you do not want to exert time and energy on the small numbers of customers you may reach.

How to Develop a Marketing Strategy

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of a profitable website. You cannot be successful unless you have customers and to bring in customers you must market your website. The methods you use to market your website may vary for any number of reasons.

  • Budget
  • Target audience
  • Products or services you are promoting
  • Whether you are promoting a website in the making or a live website
  • What phase of your marketing plan is currently in place—initial or ongoing?
  • How much time do you have to devote to marketing your website?
  • How much income are you looking to generate?
  • Are you looking for a full-time or part-time opportunity?

All of the above will have an effect on the methods of advertising you may choose to use. However, you don’t want to limit yourself to just one or two methods. The important thing is not the methods you use but rather how hard you work to promote your website. However, your initial marketing strategy is by far the most important one for providing your business with a good start. If your initial marketing efforts are successful you will be able to develop an ongoing plan that will allow you to continually bring in new customers and thus increase your profits.

If you are on a limited budget as many new website owners are, you should develop your marketing strategy using some of the free or less expensive promotional tools. While using more expensive advertising tools may provide more exposure, your initial plan should focus on developing a plan that will make your website visible. Once you begin develop a database of customers and earning some money you can use some of the more expensive promotional tools.

When you develop your marketing strategy do not stop with the initial plan. While you originally want to focus on providing exposure for your website, you should already have your next plans in place. If you create a marketing plan step by step you will be able to go straight from one point to the next instead of having to stop and think about what you are going to do next. Any break in the momentum can cause you to lose track of where you want to be—or where you should be with your marketing strategy at any given moment.

Develop Your Expertise in Salesmanship

In order to create a profitable money making website it’s important to have some expertise as a salesperson. That doesn’t mean you have to be the kind of person who can talk an Eskimo into buying a lawn mower, but you do need to know something about approaching people and convincing them why they need what you have to offer without being aggressive about it. If you are using Email advertising you want to say what you need to say about the information on your website without being demanding.

People do not like a pushy salesperson, and you are just as likely to lose sales online using that method as offline. Think of your own personal situation—if you are like most people, when salespeople are pushy you walk away without buying anything. You need to know how far to push without becoming obnoxious and losing a sale. You can be informative without being a nuisance and driving away any potential customers. Salesmanship is more than just making a sale; it means knowing how to convince a potential buyer you are the best source for what they want without being obvious about it.

One of the hardest lessons many people have to learn is how to be an aggressive salesperson without letting the customer know what you are doing. You have to know where to draw the line so you don’t apply unnecessary pressure on the potential buyer yet enough so that it doesn’t appear you don’t care whether they buy anything or not. It takes some training and experience to learn how to exercise good salesmanship, but the more experience you obtain the better you will become.

Along with salesmanship comes good personal communication and customer service skills. You may acquire potential customers who are looking to you because they were dissatisfied when their previous vendor, so you have to know how to handle those instances. You don’t want to say anything negative but just point out the way you take care of your business and customers. If someone complains it took them an extremely long time to receive what they ordered, instead of saying, “Yes, other people have told me that,” you want to say, “I’m sorry to hear about your problems there. We try to ship all of our products within (whatever the time frame is).” Never speak negatively about a competitor; it doesn’t make you look professional.

Promotion is the Key to a Successful Website

One of the first questions many people want to know before becoming involved with a money making website is how to make it profitable. They are interested in knowing what they need to do to generate sales or bring in new recruits if that is the case. They have an interest in information that can help them make the right decision and ascertain whether a money making website is the right decision for them. While it may seem a good idea at first glance, not every person has the ambition or desire to do the work necessary to create a website that will generate a healthy income.

In order to create a profitable website you must understand the importance of promotion. The more you promote your website the more potential customers you will reach. You want to reach out to all of those people—your target audience—who may be interested in what you are offering whether it’s products or services. At the same time you don’t want to waste your efforts on those who will have no interest in what you have to offer; concentrate your efforts on your target audience rather than wasting valuable time attempting to approach those who may have no need for the products or services on your website.

While we stress products and services here this is also important if you are promoting a network or affiliate marketing program. Without prospects you will be unable to expand your network or generate sales for the products you are promoting. Any kind of money making website depends upon promotion and advertising in order to become successful, and this does not end after you begin making money. If you expect to continue operating a profitable website, you will need to continue your promotional efforts.

What about those programs that promise you don’t need to do any work? While this may sound good from the onset and may draw people into the network, the truth is there is no home based business that will continue to make money if you depend on someone else to do all the work.

It’s helpful to know you have some leads in the beginning, but unless you do the work you will reach a stalemate very quickly. Promotion is the key to success and must continue to be your primary focus if you want to continue generating a healthy income from your website.

Sales and Promotion Partners for Success

There are several elements that contribute to the success of a money making website, and while sales are definitely the end result, they are not the only contributing factor. In order to generate sales you must be able to get the information to your target audience. If no one knows about your website and what you are offering you will not generate any sales volume. With that in mind it is reasonable to assume promoting your website is a prerequisite to generating sales. However, neither element can stand alone: you need to promote your website to generate sales volume.

Do not have the mistaken idea that once you do the initial promotion and begin to generate some sales volume you can stop—or at least reduce the amount of promoting you do. Unless you have a consumable product such as food items, batteries or other products that have limited lives, you will always need to have a database of customers to replace those who have what they need. Even if you provide consumable products there is always the potential for losing customers for any number of reasons such as:

  • Death
  • They have found a more competitive price
  • They no longer need the products or services you have for sale
  • They no longer wish to buy online for any number of reasons
  • They have moved and may not be able to choose the products they buy (nursing home,
    living with relatives, renting a room, etc.)

In order to continue increasing or maintaining your sales volume you need to continue promoting your website. While your initial promotional efforts will bring in some customers, you need to continually increase the visitors to your website in order to achieve and maintain a profitable money making website. While it may appear you will eventually exhaust your database of potential customers from your target audience, such is not the case. There are always new web surfers, so you will always find have enough people in your target audience to make your marketing efforts worthwhile.

If you want your website to be extremely profitable you will need to continue your marketing efforts throughout the life of your website. The more visitors you add to your database of potential customers, the better your chances are of increasing your sales volume and thus reaching the financial goals you have set for yourself.

Your Target Audience – Who Are They and How Can You Identity Them

Many people who are starting out for the first time may not understand the term “target audience” or why it is so important. These “newbies” have no idea of the importance of focusing marketing efforts to a specific group of people and would rather gather a list of thousands of names and work for quantity in their efforts rather than quality. While quantity is important in order to build a database of potential customers, quantity is also important. You don’t want to randomly send out information about your website to people who may have no need or desire to buy what you are selling.

Exactly who makes up your target audience? Your target audience is comprised of all those people who may be interested in the products or services you are offering. For instance, if you are selling swimsuits, your target audience is anyone who is interested in going swimming whether it’s to the beach, the health club or on vacation. The likelihood of generating too much success in areas where it is cold all of the time such as Alaska is slim, so you don’t want to target those regions. That doesn’t mean no one in Alaska goes swimming, but it does mean your success rate will be greatly reduced.

Being able to identify your target audience is something a beginner may find difficult to accomplish, so anyone who is unsure of how to identify and properly market to their target audience should seek the advice of someone who is experienced in this area. You want to bring in as many visitors as possible when you first begin, so you want to avoid wasting your time and efforts on those who have no use for your website offerings. While quantity may generate more visitors, that is of little importance if you don’t generate more sales. You don’t want those who are only interested in browsing; you want visitors who are going to spend some money or join the program you are promoting.

When you direct your marketing efforts to your target audience you will achieve the greatest level of success. Using this method will allow you to market for both quantity and quality, the two most important elements of marketing strategy with any business venture. Maintaining consistency is part of the strategy as well—never stop or decrease your efforts because you always need a database of those interested in what you have to offer on your money making website.