Internet Store Fronts

If you are a typical business owner in the United States as at the beginning of the 21^st Century, you are either already on the Web, or making arrangements to be there very soon.

And if you are like the average website business owner, you will end up LOSING money this year on the Internet.

Meanwhile, a few companies dominate the news with outrageous stories of spectacular success – consider that AOL recently made a successful offer for the Time/Warner Empire. New media swallowed Old media like the whale gulped down Jonah.

What is it that separates those who "make it big" on the Internet from those who flounder? Why do even successful off-line businesses fail to make the transition to the Internet ?

On the web, as in any other business venue, there are very specific rules governing an entity’s success. And it is the nature of the web’s ultra-competitive business environment that requires constant improvement and innovation to survive.

Reinventing yourself and your business for success on the Internet requires several key components, such as:

• A coordinated web-centric business plan that accurately defines your entire Internet business model, and how you will realize it.
• A well-developed resource set to support the implementation of that business plan.
• Comprehensive and easy-to-use systems for measuring your progress.
• Built-in tools for adjusting and expanding your activities in the marketplace.
• A bias for action (we can’t give you this, but you’ll need it) !

The purpose of this section of our website, then, is to help you achieve your goal of developing and implementing a successful web-based business, by providing you with the understanding and ability to develop these components.

Systems, NOT Secrets...
It’s very popular on the Internet these days to see experts touting their proprietary "Secrets for Success". That’s because "secrets" is one of the key words that compels people’s curiosity - and therefore increases sales!

If there is any ‘secret’ to the many books, courses, and private access websites dedicated to the subject of making money on the Internet, it is this:

"Successful website owners have learned how to add another revenue stream to their business by teaching people the techniques they used in developing their own business."

We're no different, mind you, it’s just that we prefer to describe the concepts involved as part of a systemic and strategic approach to website success.

"Secrets" are often standalone tactics that bear little relationship to an overall web business model or strategy. That is limiting and dangerous, in our opinion.

Certain business entities succeed, because a very large number of things are done just right. The result only comes about when the system components act harmoniously together to produce the desired result.

So "secrets" typically offer simplistic answers to tough questions that demand to be explored in more detail.

Here’s an example of some "secret" information:

Q: What’s the best way to drive web traffic?

A ("Secret"): Sex sells (ohh, there’s a 'secret' all right!), so you should create a banner ad with a picture of a sexy woman on it to draw traffic.

A ("Systems"): Sex does indeed sell, or at least it attracts a lot of lookers, but unless you’re actually selling sex on your website, what good does it do you to drive that kind of traffic? Instead, choose your traffic sources in conjunction with your website’s overall purpose, and carefully target the demographic you attract to your website. You can not separate traffic from its context – not if you want to be successful. Only traffic that seeks your web’s content, and will generate revenues and ultimately profits, is worth attracting.

As you move through this section, we urge you to keep a perspective on the material that allows you to see how each piece of your particular puzzle affects the others.

It's no secret that a well-executed, detailed strategic plan will result in success far more often than simplistic tactics conducted in a vacuum of knowledge about the larger purpose.

We can distill an otherwise extensive discussion into a simple 4-step process for web profits, with a little thinking. Indeed, several experts and research think-tanks have arrived at similar conclusions about the boiled-down requirements for successful web-based businesses. They are typically comprised of four fundamental aspects:

• WEB - Everything starts with a clean, well-designed website that meets the specific needs of its target customer base, that is to say, one that provides value to the user. It is almost trivial to say that content is king – for what is a website other than content in one form or another? Still, it is not always a straight line from "content" to "a website that works".
  
  
• TRAFFIC - The lifeblood of a web-based business is traffic. You need a constant, increasing, targeted, and motivated stream of traffic coming to your website in order for it to become successful. There are many sources of traffic (such as search engines, or banner advertising), just as there are many magnets that lure traffic (for example, search engines draw traffic to themselves by providing information and links to other websites, or "starter page" programs). You also need to make sure you have visibility on ALL the major search engines.
  
  
  
• SALES – Contrary to popular belief, even web-based businesses cannot survive very long without revenues. Your web-based business must answer several crucial questions:
  
  From what sources will you generate revenues?
  
  What sales techniques will you implement to generate the revenues?
  
  How will you take advantage of Internet technology to automate your sales processes and both serve your customers better and cut the costs of generating revenues?
  
  
• PROFITS – As Amazon.com so amply demonstrates, mere sales do not necessarily translate into profitability. Improving your online company's bottom line and ensuring its long-term survival depend on expanding the number and quality of your website's income channels. Especially on the Internet, where innovation and competition are forces that dwarf their incarnations in the off-line world.
  

As you progress through your learning curve, keep these four topics in mind. The average web-based business fails to account for one or more of them. That is why so many web-based businesses are hemorrhaging money instead of banking it.

You should consider what niche you fall into to better target your customers. Typicaly this is the "Small-Small Business" ("SSB")... we use this term to include any 1-to-10-person small business. It is not the same as the "SME" space, which one tends to generally think of as "larger small businesses and up."SSBs include an infinite variety of niches. Much like the universe itself, the "niche-space" is forever expanding, with the number and variety of services and products growing geometrically. And it is the SSB, the real backbone of our economy, that creates and fills those niches.