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.
Seasonal Effects on
Marketing
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. Also on
the gift theme but with DJ's in mind are custom slipmats which can be
customised or personalised to individual tastes.
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.

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