It's a real thing. Many people are starting to market on the internet.

So they get a website and try it out for awhile. After a month or two everything goes bust and they feel like they have wasted a ton of money and time.

This happens all too often to people who really try their hearts out to market on the internet.

Usually what happens is they bought into some large company scam of internet marketing.

They tell them all they have to do is pay around $40 a month for the website and maybe tell them to join a link farm for another $20 buck a month.

Then tell them tat it takes time and all you have to do is sit back after that and the orders will come in.

Ok, yeah right! Whose big idea was it to tell people theses things? Well this is part of the big marketing mix that people buy into all the time.

You may have seen the other things like massive traffic programs. They tell you to buy 1 million hits and you will get a load of sales.

Well if you have a site that appeals to a general audience they you may get a few sales and that's about it. The reason is because most of these are dead hits from old websites and such.

What you really want is targeted people arriving to your website.

People who have come from somewhere else like a website and maybe read an article where they were fed some really good information that helped them.

The two key phrases there are helped and good information.

The first thing you have to understand about the internet is that it is information based.

There are only two reasons for people going online usually. Those two are checking emails and looking for information that maybe solves a problem.

Once you understand this you can then begin to understand how to market on the internet.

So one really good way to market on the internet is with articles. Now don't be fooled here.

You need to learn how to write good articles with good solid headlines. If you don't you may be disappointed with the results.

So pick up a good book on the subject and learn all you can. Once you do that its time to start writing your articles.

Once you have a few articles in place, then you have to market them or distribute them. Posting them to article directories is a good thing to do.

Find as many as you can and then start the process.

However one of the most proactive things you can do is send them to ezine owners.

People who own websites that accept articles or want to run them in their ezine. But, why is this good?

For a couple of reasons. First that ezine owner may have a list of over 10,000 people on it.

Now imagine if you target the right ezine with that many people on it and the owner sends out your article to them.

This gives you huge credibility. You are in effect the expert of your chosen topic.

People will read your article and then click through to your website. And some of those people will buy you r product or service.

But, again the key here is focus and targeting. You don't want to send your gardening article to a computer user ezine. Just use common sense when looking for ezines.

Now, there is what's called paid ezine directories, where you can find these publishers.

The paid directory will tell you all about what they have and what they accept. Also if they accept articles or not.

It's a hard job trying to search the internet looking for ezines that accept articles. It can takes days. So you can speed up the process with a directory.

Once you have a membership to the directory and your article in hand.

Then its time to find as many ezine owners that target your market and accept articles. Break it into a weekly or monthly thing.

Picture this: Your prospect has just learned about one of your products or services, and is now ready to buy from you. How you handle the next critical step can make or break the sale.

Always keep in mind that most consumers are understandably wary. They won't hesitate to abandon an intended purchase if they encounter doubts or inconvenient snags in the process.

I invite you to do a bit of honest self-examination when considering the following tips, since problems in this area may be costing you dearly in lost sales, right this very minute.

Acting to improve on what you discover could very well help boost your sales immediately.

1) How Easy Is It for Your Customers to Access Information Needed to Buy From You?

a) For example, does the design of your web site make it hard to navigate, or is the information needed to complete a transaction within easy access to your customers, with minimal mouse clicks?

Poor navigation is but one of many, many different snags that hinder web site sales. Problem is, most site owners, designers, and webmasters don't realize how much more a site could sell, if it were only more user-friendly.

b) While you may wisely reduce the amount of repetitive customer service issues by answering questions through a F.A.Q., (an acronym for Frequently Asked Questions) etc., some prospects may yet have additional questions not covered in it.

Do your prospects have a way to contact you to have such questions answered, and do you have an efficient system in place for answering them, promptly and efficiently?

Is the form of contact convenient to your prospects?

2) What Forms of Payment Do You Offer Your Customers?

a) Do you require your customers to send payment to you by check, cash or money order only via regular postal mail? If you're selling online and not accepting credit cards, you're likely losing many sales.

b) What types of credit cards do you accept? Virtually any type of business can increase sales by accepting payment by Visa and MasterCard.

But even businesses already accepting Visa and MasterCard may still be losing sales by not also accepting Discover and American Express (especially in the U.S.), as well as PayPal.

True, Visa and MasterCard encompass the vast majority of all credit card transactions. But there are many consumers who instead prefer to use Discover or American Express.

Do you want their business? If so, your existing merchant account provider is most likely equipped to easily get you set up to accept them.

3) How Easy Do You Make It for Customers to Submit Payment?

a) Suppose that you do accept credit cards. Even though the risk of online credit card fraud has been greatly exaggerated, and isn't necessarily more risky than offline transactions, many consumers are concerned about submitting their credit card data online.

With this in mind, in addition to being equipped to accept online credit card orders through a secure server, do you provide alternate ordering options for those who hesitate (or refuse) to order online by credit card?

What about options to order with check, money order, or credit card, by phone, fax, or postal mail?

b) Is your online order system simple to understand and use, even for the most inexperienced users, or are they inconvenient and confusing? How do you know?

"Shopping cart abandonment" is a term used to describe when a would-be online customer abandons, or bails out of, an online order form or shopping cart, before completing an intended purchase.

Beware that this commonly overlooked problem robs Internet merchants of billions of dollars in lost sales each year, and that the selection and design of your online order system has a major impact on your profits - for good or bad!

c) Do you work hard to eliminate guesswork for customers, provide complete order details, and guide them simply and gently through the ordering process?

Remember: Any extra hoop you require prospects and customers to jump through is an extra obstacle in the way of a sale; another potential reason to change their minds about buying from you.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's always room for improvement - in every business in existence. So don't feel bad when you find them in your own business. I guarantee you they exist; you just may not be aware of them yet.

* You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your enterprise.

* You need a venue wherein you can promote your affiliate links.

* Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.

Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving.

You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won't mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more potential clients you have.

And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:

1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at wordpress.com An alternative is to go with blogger.com.

2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.

3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant's site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.

4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.

5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to outperform its competitors in the search engine rankings.

One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results.

6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.

7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers.

8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog's page rank, and consequently, your main website's traffic.

9. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you.

10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site in the Google AdSense advertising program. This will give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in future articles.

There are a some important things that you need to look at when trying to decide what the best online affiliate program is. You want to make sure that you look real closely at the affiliate program before you join. You can ask questions or do research into the affiliate program to find out if it would be a good fit for your business.

1. You want to find out if the online affiliate program is free or do they want you to buy a product or service before you join. Some programs do want a very small fee for you to join. That does not make them a bad affiliate program. Find out why they want you to pay a small fee if you are concerned about it.

2. Find other people who are using the same affiliate program. Ask them questions to find out if they are having good results with the program. You also want to ask if they have had any problems. With an affiliate program that is online, you can always find other people promoting the same program you are looking at.

3. If this is one of the affiliate programs that is best online they will provide you with marketing materials that you can use to promote it. Such as banners, classified ads, links, emails, etc... You also want to make sure that you will be provided help online or offline if you run into problems. The best online affiliate programs will provide around the clock help. Make sure that they will keep in contact with you on a regular basis through emails.

4. Another important issue to check into is how much do they pay, and how often do they pay. It is always a good idea to find out if they have an online sales stats page, and a way to track your sales. Also find out if they will notify you through email when you make a sale. Most of the best affiliate programs online will provide this information.

5. The best online affiliate programs will have more than one product that you can use to make backend sales to the same person. You also want to find out if you can make residual income from any of their products, or if they are all one time sales. Another important piece of information to find out is if you will be credited with a sale if people come back in a month or more and buy the product. One more thing to check into is if you will get a percentage of the commission for anyone who signs up under you.

6. Do you have to use the sales material that is provided with the affiliate program? You want to find out if you can come up with your own materials to advertise the program. Most of the best online affiliate programs will give you leeway to come up with your own marketing materials.

7. One last thing that you want to find out is if they have a lot of different ways for the customers to pay. If they don't, that could mean lost commissions for you. Online affiliate programs that are the best will provide customers more than one way to pay.

So as you can see, there is a lot of things that you want to find out before joining an affiliate program. The best online affiliate programs will be more than happy to answer any questions that you have. It is always best to find out this information first, that way you are not disappointed after you join.

Niche marketing is an old and very successful marketing strategy whereby a company focuses on marketing and selling to a clearly defined segment of potential consumers. The company earns by supplying a unique product or service to this narrowly defined market which other companies have not met or provided.

Are there potential buyers online? According to the Central Intelligence Agency's latest figures, there are over 185.55 million internet users in the United States alone, of these around 139.52 million active users. The Computer Industry Almanac which compiles statistics on global internet users, records a staggering 934 million users for 2004 and this market continues to grow.

Do these users buy online? Statistics gathered on internet users, show they do and their numbers are increasing. For instance, in December 2004, online sales rose by 53%, from $795 million of the same month 2003, to $1.22 billion 2004, (gathered by CMP Media a service provider of information and marketing services to the technology and healthcare industries). For each unique marketing hook, product and service, your business blog can tap in, that's how many niche markets you can serve.

The next question then to answer: Can your blog be the perfect vehicle for reaching and marketing to your niche?

You should realize that successful blogs go a step further in providing excellent content, as well as regular updates or new content. Most websites provide these services. Rather it is the ability of these blogs to provide the author and the readers' a venue for one-on-one conversations, in an impersonal medium. By sharing commentaries, thoughts and opinions, the author positions himself or herself as being an authority in his or her field of work. If you write content that is relevant to their needs, they'll remember and keep returning to your blog.

But that's not all; you need to have an abiding passion for the subject matter or product you'll sell. Without this, your blog won't stand out and carve itself a niche apart from the other blogs.

In essence, a well researched and crafted business blog is a potential revenue center. It has the authors' personal touch and speaks to the need of this particular consumer. As every marketing analyst knows, when a seller understands his or her consumers well, this seller gets their business.

Do you feel you have what it takes to be successful in the music industry? Are you looking to make it big in the music business? Have you tried everything you know to be discovered and signed by a major label? Then, you might want to try a new marketing approach that's taken the music industry by storm.

It's called viral marketing. Viral Marketing is an innovative new approach to getting yourself noticed by millions quick, fast, and in a hurry. Do you like the sound of that? The concept of viral marketing is appealing to those music professions that are still operating on a meager budget and do not have the means to purchase ads in magazines or billboards.

However, most people have one thing in common, the Internet.
The Internet can put your band in touch with millions of music lovers for minimal costs. Not to mention it could provide you with the opportunity to be noticed by agents and record labels.

What's the best part of this? You might already have built a fan base with viral marketing well before your album ever hit the shelves. In today's competitive music industry it might just be the thing you need to reach that next level.

In the age of the Internet, viral marketing has never been so easy. Free sites such as You Tube, My Space, and even Blogger; offer musicians and singers an opportunity to share their music with the public by the thousands, even millions for free to very little cost. Why not take advantage of an explosion that's revolutionized the way bands and singers get noticed.

You can even upload your own music video to these sites and other Bloggers or Myspacers can share or email them to friends. That's advertisement in the Music Business that you can't buy-literally and it has proven a success for bands such as My Chemical Romance and other music industry professionals.

If you're interested in Viral marketing, check out a band already using this approach. It's perfectly okay to take a route in marketing your band; you know has proven to work for another. Upload your music; nothing is more infectious-pardon the pun-than being able to hear the song repeatedly.

More and more people are turning to IPod's, mp4 players and the computer to listen to their music than ever. This an extremely important concept when you're attempting to market your band. In addition, the Internet is a vital part of your marketing campaign. Once you've researched the sites and marked your path, there should be nothing to stand in your way of becoming a success. Unless, of course, your band is missing a little thing called talent.

Two similar Internet scams were reported by separate women who had put items up for sale in the classifieds section of www.fortwayne.com, police reports said.

In the first case, a woman had advertised an exercise bike for sale at $350. She was contacted by another woman who offered to send extra money on top of the selling price if she would send the difference — minus a $40 handling fee — to the other woman's brother in England, an Allen County Sheriff's Department report said.

Monday, the woman received an envelope with a return address of a man in Fresno, Calif. Inside was a letter and a $3,000 check made out to the Omni Houston Hotel in Houston, Texas. The letter asked for the woman to cash the check immediately and send the money to an address in Amsterdam, Holland.

Fraud detection and payment processing software provider ClearCommerce Europe has completed a survey on online Christmas shopping and claimed that fear of fraud could result in a lower than expected takeup of e-shopping.

The company reports that 88% of all those questioned are scared of being a victim of credit or debit card fraud if they should shop online. Also, 12% have actually been victims of some form of fraud and 50% are concerned about their details being stolen via an e-commerce site.

Out of all those consumers that do shop online 60% are spending just GBP10 or under each month, generally from a secure and familiar environment such as their home PC or a computer at their workplace. The most popular online purchases tended to be low value items such as CDs, books, flowers and tickets, purchased by 62% of all those questioned. Just 12% of all online purchases were groceries, electrical goods, flights or holidays.

We will continue to invest in systems, people and product expansion, each of which helps us better serve customers ... For the rest of this year we expect to invest more heavily than we have in the past.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com made this quote back in 1999. We are all familiar with Amazon and its tremendous success over the past several years. Even though Amazon is not as profitable as it would like to be, they definitely did one thing right – and that was to create one of the most recognized online brands in the world. Their website is one of the most well-known and trusted websites to purchase products from on the Internet and every product company would love to replicate what Amazon has done in just 12 years in business.

Looking at the Amazon website - how is it that they are able to sell millions of products while maintaining a website that is user-friendly, easy to navigate and generating millions of dollars a day in online sales? The answer lies in their core back-end applications and advanced content management (CMS) technology. If you really want to get into it, I believe Amazon is more of a technology company than they are a product company because of the number of advanced systems, developers, networks and applications required to run and operate their online business; however, I’ll leave the further explanation of this theory for another article.

Now let’s go back and review Jeff Bezos’ quote one more time – “We will continue to invest in systems, people and product expansion, each of which helps us better serve customers...” So what Mr. Bezos is suggesting is that in order to improve Amazon’s user experience, they must focus on investing more in technology that will allow them to continually increase the product selection on their website. As owners of our business, we should take this valuable knowledge and experience from Jeff Bezos and apply it to our own product-driven websites. If we want to increase sales, simplify our business, and improve our user’s experience, we must forever focus on product expansion.

Implementing a content management system for your website will allow you to easily maintain your products as you focus to expand your business online. A CMS will allow one or more administrators of your website to prepare and publish information, without the need to create and manage HTML coding. By using a CMS and focusing on product expansion, you will increase sales, enhance your user’s experience and minimize resources, while effectively and efficiently managing your product-driven website.

I highly recommend considering some type of CMS to help manage products on your website. If you want to stay competitive and develop a stronger business, you must operate like Amazon and continually invest in systems, people and product expansion - each of which will help you to better serve your online customers.

At Hudson Horizons, we provide website design, development, content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify your business.

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing and SEO services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business." By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate a business online.

In order to profit from the internet, it's really quite simple once you've mastered a few learned steps. Granted this is the desire of millions of entrepreneurs, but they often fail due to not having a successful outline or proven path to follow.

Basically, you need only follow 6 detailed steps in order to assure yourself the success you hope to attain.

1. First you need to establish your product or service. This can be anything from a new product idea, selling information, to reselling an existing product with the rights to do so.

2. You need to have a viable means of processing your payments from your customers that are acceptable on their terms. There are numerous online methods of receiving payments but what about the doubting Thomas that doesn't trust the internet to process a payment?

3. Having the right presentation of your product is key in attracting the customers you hope to attract. You need to know what causes consumers to react to favorable advertising. It's not the amount of advertising that often causes successful sales as much as it is the right type of advertising.

4. Knowing what to price your products is as important as knowing your profit margins. If you charge too little, you may create doubt in the consumers thinking, there must be something wrong here, or if you over-price your product, you may generate sales, but volume is where you reach a successful level of business.

5. Making your business self-operating is paramount to successful online sales. If you have to monitor your computer like you would a typical brick and mortar store, you've defeated the whole purpose of having an online business. You want to allow the online business to be your source of additional income not an additional job.

6. Lastly, you want to track your sales verses your hits or visits. If you can measure how often you make a sale per the number of visitors to your online business, you can determine how successful your advertising is working for you. That's where you spend the vast percentage of your time, improving your advertising.

Increase in sale of Propecia is directly related to increased awareness of healthy hair. The increase in sale of Propecia means healthy and strong hair for more individuals. If your friend has got out of hair loss, then most probably, he might be using Propecia. No other medication treats male pattern baldness as efficiently as Propecia does. This is the big reason behind steep rise of in Propecia sales.

Propecia is meant for treatment of male pattern baldness only. Male pattern baldness or androgenic alopecia is the hair loss disease, which occurs because of a very different reason. Male pattern baldness grows over the residue of testosterone. Testosterone is a hormone, which brings masculinity in the body of a male child and makes him fit to take part in activities of reproduction. After commencement of secretion of testosterone in teenage, its secretion continues through out the life. Daily a small quantity of testosterone is produced in testicles. Testosterone, after accomplishment of its work, synthesizes into di-hydro-testosterone (DHT). This final product of testosterone is very harmful for hair follicles of scalp. It takes the route of skin pores for its excretion from body and during this process it gets entrapped in hair follicles. Hence, one can say that the gradual deposit of DHT in hair follicles is the prime cause of fall of hair in men.

Propecia is a powerful DHT blocker. Since DHT is only a waste material and has no use in our body, therefore blocking its synthesis is not harmful. Propecia gives amazing results in 90% cases of male pattern baldness. Only Propecia has approval of FDA as a DHT blocker. This reason is enough to have belief over effectiveness of Propecia. Propecia is a prescription medication; one should not use it without doctor’s recommendation. Patients of cardio-vascular diseases, ladies and children are not prescribed medication.

Doctors generally prescribe 1mg Propecia pill, which should be taken with a glassful of plain water. A pill daily is the general pattern of dosages. However, the doctor can make adjustment in pattern of dosages according to requirement of the patient. Whatever be the condition, never take overdose of Propecia. If you have skipped one or more dosages of Propecia even then don’t try to compensate it with overdosing. Propecia can cause side effect, but the good thing is that side effects of Propecia takes place only in rare cases. Moreover, side effects of Propecia are mild like swelling of lips, hypersensitivity and decreased libido. If any side effect occurs and does not disappear within a few days consult a doctor immediately.

With use of Propecia for a year, the appearance of baldness can change remarkably. Propecia is easily available through an online sales store. Sale of Propecia through online order gives your many benefits. Firstly, you need not go to your local pharmacist. Secondly, delivery of drug is made at your doorstep; both of these facilities are time saving. Buy Propecia through an online sale and regain healthy hair.

Business Week Online reported that a New York Jewelry store named “American Pearl” added an online store to their brick and mortar storefront in 1997. This may not be news, but what happened in the years since they launched into ecommerce is nothing short of astounding.

Following the addition of online sales the growth of the company increased 20% annually. By the fall of 2006, more than three quarters of their business was conducted online with annual sales at nearly $20 million dollars.

This report may leave dangling dollar signs in your mind. However, the truth is adding an e-store as an expansion of your existing business is a long-term investment that will require as much from you as when you started your storefront. A start-up as an online only company may be equally as hard.

So, what are some of the basics for online business success?

1) What are going to sell? – Do some preliminary market research. There’s nothing worse than developing an idea that no one is interested in. Make your online market one that is consumer centric.

2) Get a plan – it is important to have an understanding of where you want to go and how you plan to get there.

3) Market Market Market – Get your name out there. Use every legitimate means to encourage website visitation. This includes Pay Per Click advertising, Adsense, Meta Titles and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

4) Be willing to bend – When you understand that not everything is going to go right the first time you are better able to adapt, regroup and alter your business plan to facilitate new growth and minimize the effects of fading markets.

5) The eye of the tiger – You never stop marketing your website. When you gain a clearer picture of your target demographic it is important to pursue them with great enthusiasm.

6) The Frugal Financier – You’ve heard the old adage, “Don’t give up your day job.” This sentiment is needed in online marketing where the hours can be long and the income minimal in the start-up phase of your business. Individuals who were gainfully employed in a position other than their online sales started most Internet companies. It is important to minimize costs in the startup phase of your operation by taking advantage on no-cost and low-cost ways to let others know about your business.

7) Never stop learning – There are new techniques that are being explored everyday to maximize the impact on online marketing. Make learning a part of your business plan. This can be outsourced, but there is liberation in first-hand knowledge.

If you have a niche market that has the potential to become a thriving online retail outlet keep pursuing the dream. Online success is very possible, but you need to be committed to doing everything you can to give it the best chance for growth.