Starting and Running an Internet Based Business

There are fundamental differences between running an online business as opposed to a conventional offline business, however the two strategies do also share many basic similarities. Online business relies heavily on "publishing" rather than advertising and many online business owners appear to overlook this basic strategy, believing that advertising is still the most dominant means of promoting their business.

In the online business market your are a publisher first and foremost and if you do right your advertising will follow accordingly. Dominating the search engines for keywords relating to your market niche will have the controlling influence over your business success. Understanding the strategies to accomplish this should be your overiding goal.

Internet Business studies Overview

One of the factors that can heavily influence the success of an online marketing campaign would be seasonal attributes, especially during the months leading up to Christmas. This is even more evident if the product or services are directly to Christmas gifts, toys or christmas presents. In fact the Christmas period would be the ideal time of year for budding entrepreneurs to "cut their teeth" in the internet marketing field.

Internet marketing for Christmas products

Ideally you should start your Christmas based venture in plenty of time, perhaps as early as September if you have a lot of research to do. Perhaps one of the easiest ways to break into the Christmas market would be by way of affiliate marketing, utilising the enormous traffic pulling powers of Ebay and Amazon, both of which offer an easy entry affiliate scheme - simply by referring visitors to those sites.

The redirection of visitors plants a time limited cookie within their browser and the referring site gets credit (commission) for any purchase made by the visitor, regardless of the page to which they were sent.

So, in reality all you need do is convert your website visitors into buyers at someone else's site. This is far easier to do during the christmas period - all you need do is target the christmas gifts, christmas toys or indeed any christmas related product. Christmas conversions are generally 300 - 500% easier than the rest of the year. Christmas shoppers are on a mission, credit card at the ready and they're in buying mode period.

Need proof? - head on over to amazon.com and check out the toys and games sections - they even list the best selling christmas gifts and toys for you - picking a product is a no brainer. Take a look at Kota The Triceratops for example - here is a $300 christmas toy aimed at toddlers that is flying off the shelf. It doesen't take too much research to grab a piece of this action, or how about some Nintendo action in the form of their Nintendo Pink DS Lite products - Home in a a particular model, say Nintendo DS Lite Pink for example. October 2008 google searches show an estimate 65,000 searches - just for this one model!

Don't worry about opting for higher priced product either, with enough search volume and demand smaller commissions soon start to add up. Again taking a marketing example from the christmas gifts and toys sector we can see that another crazy popular toy this year is Elmo Live - Elmo is an interactive doll from the popular Sesame Street production. Elmo Live waves his arms, sits and stands, even crosses his legs. He tells stories and jokes, sings songs and plays games.
Elmo Live's head even nods back and forth as he speaks.

Correct keyword research plays a major role in determining your online marketing success -Taking the Nintendo Pink DS Lite example from above we can see determine via Google own keyword research tool that there are some ultra competitive search terms and some not quite so competitive. We need to strike a balance between searches and competitiveness - NO competition usually means not many searches, so look for something mid range, say Pink DS Lite which is still a derivative of the major keyword, has plenty of searches and is a whole lot less competitive than nintendo ds lite for example.

Alternatively take a look a some of the consumer electronics that feature high on peoples christmas gifts wish list. Digital cameras are always popular, but rather than target the entire market, choose a niche or brand within the digital camera market; e.g Canon, which in itself is way too broad and competitive - so opt for a particular digital camera model, such as the SD1100 IS - or rather the Canon Powershot SD1100 IS - highly popular, highly searched, yet not too competitive.

The search engines and Google in particular love pages that have strong links to them, especially offsite links that contain keyword rich anchor text. however there is still a right way and a wrong way to point your links, and most people get it wrong.

See this keyword link article for further explanation.