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There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good in the internet. The troubling thing is, there are maybe a tenfold or even a hundredfold of stories contradictory to theirs. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is web based but only a handful will succeed.

Is this through luck? That's even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the desire to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.

The Very Basic

Like Neo, traffic is “The One”. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldn’t have anyone to sell your products to. In the internet world traffic is the walk in customer. The more traffic you have the more people would be able to sell your products to.

But like any business that’s in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that goes in will buy, but the greater of number that do come in to browse your merchandise, the greater number of people that will buy your products. It is a simple and well know fact.

But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual customers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.

Many of these success stories get their traffic from paying others. Yes that’s right; you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people that knows that your site exists; the more people would of course go to your web site, that’s common sense.

While there are many ways that can get you advertising for free, this do not generate the same high volume as those methods that are getting paid. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo.

The Value of Searches

The search and will be the easiest and fastest medium in finding what a person needs in the internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks that they are the most common sites that people go to. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.

Search engines provide information to the millions of users that they have each day. They provide links to many sites that a user may be looking for. If your sites link pop up in the high ranks of the search results page, you get a great chance that they will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your web site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks.

When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. This may sound like not such a good idea, but the payoffs would tell a different story. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will never go with an empty sales day.

Paying for your Traffic

Normally, you'll be charged with the number of hits a link will get when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. For some search engines, you will be charged with the number of times your ad shows up when a certain keyword or keyword phrase is searched. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword for the right moment.

All the money you spend in paying for your traffic will not be for nothing. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.

Overture AKA now known as Yahoo because of Yahoo’s takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the simplest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many companies in the game.

To get a person to go to a web site than others, it needs to be very visible. Providing ads that could direct potential clients and costumers to their web site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or company’s ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted.

Yahoo offers a chance for any business to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your web site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your web site given the chance to view your pages as well as your merchandise. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a considerable amount for your company.

Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every company’s dream. Many methods are used and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such an item or service. Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business.

Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Google’s Adwords. Actually, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person enters in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched.

For example, Lets say you run a car parts retail/wholesale web site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. You don’t need to fully optimize your site with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques.

While some work so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your web site a lot quicker.

You will have to cough up some money when using this service though. There's different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your advertising uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites.

Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them. With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people being aware of your web site or items. With more web site visitors you increase the sales of your web site which makes your investment with your advertising a wise one.

With so many competitions in the internet based businesses, it is important to take a huge jump forward from the pack by advertising. Yahoo/Overture will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. It’s a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit. 

It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, do not be counted with them.

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This would also be the case in web designing.

Every individual would definitely want their website to look nice, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few tips we could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.

When designing, always use matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and blue. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.

Lastly, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the images must not be too big in terms of file size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs.

So, planning is something we should always do, before trying something.

Part B Design
Introduction

Importance of the latter :

Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a great design into perspective, imagine when we are buying a T-Shirt. {First thing, First of all], what do we obviousebsite].

A Navigation
Introduction

Importance of the latter :

One of the first implications of a well-organized / good site, is to keep your visitors in the site. A site is definitely made for a reason, unless intended for private use, which is the minimum. For example, a portfolio site would want to be visited and it’s content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your site certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the site might think, do and react.

1 )  Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to figure out how to think the way your visitors think.

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks per target page ), well planned  in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular item's information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the site, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even can't find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the item's information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc…a few more clicks > product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, wouldn’t a site with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

People always want to follow the latest thing, be it in fashion, sports, that kind of thing. Web sites have become a necessity to almost everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even young adults have created personal sites with their respective reasons, be it for profit, or for entertainment.

What one must consider, however, before creating a website, are the factors in which must be put to thought before doing so, such as the cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.

Firstly, associating with the cost, one must always try to find an affordable host, not spending too much, nor too little. A cheap host does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always look for value for money deals. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are many cases of web hosts not providing the service they had assured other people, some had even shut down and were nowhere to be seen. Keep this note in mind, as if you would like a long-lasting website, this would be the first thing to look for.

Next, could hiring a professional be affordable? Is it the best way? For simple web sites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use software, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be the hurdle here.

So, having considered the things to do before building a website, do we actually NEED one? If creating one would boost sales or promote positive implications to oneself, then by all means, go ahead and do what is best. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.

Creating a website is not so much a challenge, if we compare it to the schooling of other technical skills. Most people tend to give up and pack their bags when they hear the word “programming” and “technical”. They think it`s too much of a hassle to actually learn a whole computer “language”. HTML, the most basic computer language in building sites, is actually pretty easy to make sense of, as long as you have the want in learning new things.
What is HTML?

HTML is the acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. For learning purposes, just think of it as a language that the computer understands. For example, as humans, we were taught different languages; i.e. HTML as a language, is mostly and specifically used to create a website. The web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, will then decipher and interpret the code or rather, language(HTML), and display it in a way you can understand it, just like in a basic webpage.
Coding.

Coding the HTML language might be a bit tough for some of us, so we can actually purchase programs, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, and also Microsoft Frontpage. These programs are mostly created to help people in designing professional webpages/websites.

Furthermore, you could also aquire access to online site-builders, website builders that are inbuilt and can be directly controlled from the internet. There are many different and specific builders online.

Books and magazines have guides that can help in offering tutorials and ways to put up our own sites. Even online tutorials are credible, as in the modern world, information technology is the best and most cost efficient way in keeping know-how, especially in this particular field.

So, one could start and build one right away. If you have fun coding, it might even become a favorable past-time.

When it comes to graphics, most Internet marketers shy away from using graphic templates whether it’s ebook covers, site layouts or promotional banners because they firmly believe that by using graphic templates, they are tarnishing their own business. They want to have a unique identity and hence will always find a professional graphic designer to do the task. Well, you’re in for a big surprise!

When you buy a graphic template, you will be able to customize it to an extent or even build a totally new design based on it! What is the point of using the template then, you say? Well, it serves as a source of inspiration and ideas for a totally new design. You cannot derive anything from a blank canvas, right?

On top of that, you are actually saving a lot of precious time that you can otherwise spend on more important matters like developing new products or market your products. When you buy a pre-made template, you only need to edit a thing or two to give it an identity of your own, and that gives you more time and flexibility to work on other stuff.

OK, let's say you argue that hiring a designer to do the job is equally fast. That may be true but don’t forget, hiring a professional designer to do a custom design for you will cost you a lot of money. Unless you need a totally unique identity that you are aiming to establish firmly in your niche market, you don’t need to get a designer to design it for you.

Not all graphic templates are suitable, so you have to be careful when choosing one. Consider quality over the price, and you’re on your way to creating a positive image for your business while saving more time for more productive chores!

A lot of online company owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves — the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product’s marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they can find that their simple “homemade” site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started everything with no money also, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don’t want to do.

When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the “dirty job” to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you’re halfway through the job. This way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy.

On the other side, the designers you hire a professionals so they are good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won’t have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to repair it for you. Again, they'll be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably will be able to.

Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!

So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!

Understanding the type of individuals who visit your web site is a very important task because one can use that info to enhance your web site to suit them. As a result, one will get more trusting returning visitors that come back again and back for more.

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on landscaping, but a professional botanist might snub his nose at the very same web site. Similarly, an average individual will leave a web site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that web site interesting.

Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your web site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your web site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young individuals? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.