Internet Marketing is a dynamic new skill currently being adopted by thousands of businesses around the world and, due to the very nature of the worldwide web, people getting into business for the first time are now faced with a choice that didn’t exist a decade ago…

…whether to go for a conventional ‘bricks and mortar’ business or set up their very first Internet-based concern.

If you were starting out from scratch and you had to choose one of the following, which one would you choose?

Online vs Offline

OFFLINE TRADING – With a ‘bricks and mortar’ business you simply cannot concentrate on acquiring the premises alone, this is just the beginning. You also have to give consideration to an extensive list of other important factors…

• Rent
• Rates
• Insurances
• Lighting
• Display Stands
• Shop-Fitting
• Flooring
• Cleaning Contracts
• Maintenance Contracts
• Security Contracts
• Staffing
• Health & Safety
• Fire Prevention
• Fire Fighting Equipment
• Fire Alert Devices
• Anti-Theft Alarms
• Theft Prevention
• After-Hours Alarms
• Communications Devices; telephones (landline & mobile)
• Computer Systems
• Utilities
• Staff Training
• Facilities
• Point-Of-Sale Equipment
• Bags & Wraps…

…and we haven’t even got around to the subject of your actual stock, yet! Also, with business premises you are ensuring that for each and every month you’re in business you’re also going to be paying out two sets of bills;

1. Business Running Costs – electricity bills, water bill, gas bill, rates, rent, insurance, etc.
2. Household Running Costs – electricity bills, water bill, gas bill, rates, rent, insurance, etc.

Before the true costs of ‘retail’ premises can be fully realized, a great deal of small businesses go under simply because the owners have allowed themselves to fall heavily in love with the ‘idea’ of owning business premises without taking into account all the ‘hidden’ expenditures involved. It might make far more financial sense to invest in a second home than business premises and here’s why…

Closed for Business

Let’s say you operate a retail store that opens its doors from 9am to 6pm each day, 7 days a week. At 9 hours per day, that’s a maximum trading time of 63 hours per week or 3276 hours per year. However, if you look at it another way, your store is closed for 15 hours per day, 105 hrs per week or 5460 hours per year.

What this really means is you’re paying one whole year’s rent, rates, insurances, wages, etc, for a store that’s closed for over 227 days per year (not including calendar holidays). That’s over two thirds of the year! (At least with a second home, you get to use it 24 hour a day!)

ONLINE TRADING – If the idea of online trading sounds a little more ‘risk-free’ to you, you’ll be happy to know that with online-based income projects you rarely experience the same staff, premises, stock or insurance-related issues as you would with a regular ‘bricks-and-mortar’ business.

Open All Hours

Your main business goals should be to maximize your trading time, minimize your outlay in all areas and promote mass awareness of your offers. With an online-based business you not only get to operate 24 hours per day, you also get to minimize your outlay by eliminating fulfilment and customer acquistion costs. Lower expenses and increased exposure inevitably leads to greater return on your investment.

So, in summary, there’s always two choices when it comes to setting up a business from scratch, online or offline. However, one of those choices can end up a very profitable activity whereas the other is more likely to end up as nothing more than a very expensive hobby.

In future posts, you’ll be introduced to IM-WebCrafters (online business owners) who creatively use their computers and Internet access to consistently increase their monthly revenue with the minimum expenditure of time, money and effort. You’ll also get to learn how to use the same methods, tools and mindset as they do to build your own portfolio of automated income channels. Learn more…

Having the bad Internet marketing strategies can ultimately ruin your business. There are many mistakes Internet marketers make when they first started out in this industry. Here are some of the bad Internet marketing strategies they used as a mistake in running their own business.

1. The Wrong JV Strategy
When Internet marketers first started out, at some point in time they figured they need help. Help to set up their website, create their own e-book or to sell their product to a large list in order to gain more profit. Let us take the scenario of wanting to sell their own products to someone else’s list.

A list is a list of email addresses of the people that has subscribed or opted-in to promotional email newsletters that has information of value. Having a joint venture partner who has a large list sounds good to be true, because the probability of making a huge amount of profit is very high.

However, the mistake that some Internet marketers do is that they promote a product that is contending with their JV’s product rather than complimenting them. For example, if I am your JV partner and I am promoting a copywriting course to my list, but you want me to promote your copywriting course as well that clashes with some of my copywrting training fundamentals, what were you and I thinking?

What we should do is to promote our products that compliment to one another. So, if I am promoting a copywriting course to my list, you can promote a copywrting e-book or software. Thus, wouldn’t you imagine that there would be more credibility in our products, sales would be much more effective and the profit could be easily split?

2. Leaving Your Pay-Per-Click Ad At That
One of the most biggest mistakes Internet marketers make is not testing out their ads for their effectiveness in click through rates and website conversion. How a pay-per-click advertisement works is that for every click your customers clicked on your ad, you will have to pay a few cents.

What some Internet marketers do is that they create an advertisement and just leave it for targeted traffic to come to their sites but they do not test out other different ads that have the potential to bring more targeted traffic, but induce less cost.

I like to use Google Adwords because the changes I make in the ad takes place immediately rather than waiting a couple of days at other pay-per-click engines. What I recommend you to do is to change the style and words of your ad at least once in two weeks. At the same time, take note of the traffic and website conversion rate. A website conversion rate simply means the number of your visitors that turn into your customers.

Do this internet marketing strategy for three different ads that promote the same product and compare them to one another. The ad that gives you the highest number of traffic and website conversion rate is the ad that you should be using for that product.

3. Being Less Than Honest In E-mail Marketing
Internet marketers build large email lists to promote their products or to provide them with freebies, newsletters or advice based on what their customers are looking for. However, some Internet marketers are dishonest in the ways of email marketing. They will repurpose or sell their lists to other internet marketers of another niche and their customers will eventually receive emails that did not opt-in for.

This is an act of not respecting customer privacy and you can be labelled as a spammer. What you can do is to find a JV partner of the same niche as you’re in and ask if he could help you promote your product in his list. As a reward, he gets commissions for every product he has sold in his list.

Besides these three bad internet marketing strategies, There are many other strategic mistakes that people do not realise that could harm their business. This is often overlooked because making money is utmost on their minds. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be thinking about making money, I’m saying that you should be making money the smart way.

Discover from other internet marketers the mistakes that they have made throughout their Internet marketing journey and learn from it in order to prevent your business from unforseen circumstances.