Website Design vs. Website Marketing

Strategic online profits strategies often come down to website design vs. website marketing.

As a business owner, which is more important to a profitable business?

Well the truth of the matter is that regardless of how fancy your website design may be, you will never get visitors or customers for your business without achieving a high ranking with the popular search engines. 

A fancy web design is NOT sufficient.    

In order to attract visitors and ultimately customers to your website, you need to get a high search engine ranking. 


Since you are already a business owner, there is an excellent chance that you already have a blog or a website for your business.

The main question is whether or not people can quickly find you when they are searching for your products or services.

Statistically, it has been proven over and over again that 90% of all search engine users never leave page one when they get their search results.

Statistics also show that over 70% of the click throughs are made on the top three search  results that are on the first page.

As a business owner, your objective should be to get those clicks by ensuring that your website gets listed on the first page of the search results; preferably in the first or second position.

If you aren't already getting those clicks, you can bet your competition is.

When it comes to website design vs. website marketing, remember that a gorgeous website on page 3 or 4 of the search engine results will not make you a dime in profits.

Although your website may have been designed by the best in the industry, it it's not at the top of page one of the search engine results page, you need to get it there.

Hire yourself an expert in website marketing and SEO and watch your profits grow.

Strategic Online Profit Streategies: Strategic Video Marketing Strategies

Here is a simple 4-step strategic video marketing strategy that will generate tremendous amounts of web traffic to your website or blog.

• First you need to download the free CamStudio screen recording software.

Once you download and familiarize yourself with CamStudio, create a "teaser" video presentation on the niche topic of your choice using Powerpoint and CamStudio.

Remember to include your website address at the beginning and at the end of your video.

• Optimize your video by using relevant long tail keywords in the Title of your video.

In order to get the greatest amount of traffic possible, do some basic keyword research using free tools such as Wordtracker (take advantage of their free trial) or Google's keyword tool.

Your keyword research should be centered around finding popular long-tail keywords that will attract traffic and can be easily used in your Video Title.

Once you have optimized and are satisfied with your video, your next step is to sign up for a free account on TubeMogul.

Pay particular attention to their "Terms of Service" on the sign up page. It states that "you will not upload any multi-level marketing, affiliate marketing, network marketing, home-based business,cash gifting, phishing, pornographic or copyrighted third-party content."

Any users uploading videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam will be banned.

TubeMogul's PlayTime video advertising platform was built for branding, particularly for video marketers.

Once you sign up for your free account on TubeMogul, your video will be distributed all over the web with a "live" link to your web page in the description.

It takes some time, creativity and effort but if you do this daily for a month, you’ll generate tons of traffic to your website.

Of all the strategic online profit strategies for video marketing we've come across, this one takes the prize.

Two Strategic Online Profit Strategies That Maximize Profits

These two strategic online profit strategies will maximize profits for you and are simple to implement on your website or blog.

We all know that list building is one of the most important strategic online profit strategies used by online marketers but many of us neglect a simple implementation technique that can substantially improve profits; placement of the opt in box.

Placement of the opt in or subscription box is important. 

You need to place the opt in box where people are most likely to see it to provide their name and email address.

The four best locations are:

• To put the opt in box after each Blogspot or WordPress post. 

• To place an opt in box in the sidebar of every page of your blog or website, preferably foremost in the upper left hand sidebar.

• An opt in check box is also good to use when commenting on blog posts.

• Although some visitors get annoyed with pop-ups and pop-unders, another effective strategy is to place an exit pop-up at every other page on your website or blog.

As long as you provide something of value for your visitors and have your site filled with useful interesting information, your visitors will reciprocate by giving you their contact information.

Make better use of the Thank You Page on your site.

Believe it or not, the Thank You Page is a one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on your website. 

After people subscribe to your list or make a purchase on your site, they are normally directed to the Thank You Page. 

Don't waste the opportunity of not taking advantage of the time your customers are on your Thank You Page. 

Don't bore your visitors with one time offers that they are used to seeing on just about every other site. 

Instead, try implementing a couple of these strategies to maximize profits.

• Take a picture of the product you are marketing, write a descriptive testimonial about it and place it on the Thank You Page. 

• Depending on the item that was purchased, you can offer an additional discount or a quantity break for the product as an incentive for the buyer to purchase additional items.

• Find an affiliate offer that augments the product or service you are selling and promote that affiliate product in your Thank You Page.

Only your lack of imagination can limit the strategic online profit strategies that maximize profits on your site.

Strategic Online Profit Strategies For Success: Consider A Partnership

Consider a partnership as one of the strategic online profit strategies for a successful home based business. 

We all know that starting any home based business is risky, especially with the current business environment.

Going it alone expands the risk potential which is why many online entrepreneurs hook up with at least one additional business partner.

Before you consider a partnership, you should already be aware of the numerous  disadvantages of having a partner in a business relationship. 

Many articles have been written about partnerships so I won't bore you with redundant information.

However when done correctly, a successful partnership can literally double your chances of success.  There is a lot to be said for the adage "two heads are better than one".

When two intelligent motivated business minds are on the same page working for a common goal, there is virtually no limit to what can be accomplished in a business venture.

When you consider a partnership, it is very important that both partners bring something different to the table.

Each partner should compliment the other in some way that benefits the common business goal.

If you can find a business partner with a complementary or unique skill set, an exceptional personality with leadership traits and a sincere desire for success whom you genuinely like and trust, you need to sign them up before they hit the door.

Starting a business alone gets old fast!

Having a partner promotes fresh innovative ideas, improves cost effective solutions to business challenges and adds an extra pair of "fresh" eyes that can look at business challenges from another perspective.

The most important factor when you consider a partnership is TRUST.

For this reason, it's a good idea to thoroughly vet your potential partner.  Set a trial period that is mutually agreeable to both parties so each party can get to know the other person and hopefully create a bond.

A good partner will immediately benefit your business. 

It's a huge advantage when you have someone to "bounce" your ideas off of and fine tune your profit strategies. 

If you're running a small Internet business with only a few or no employees, having a business partner allows you greater flexibility in your work schedule.

When you become ill or get "burned out" and need a vacation from your business, you have a partner to fall back on.

A good partner will also be your biggest critic.  It's always good to have someone with an interest in your business go over your business decisions before you implement them.

Although many business owners take on a partner strictly for financial purposes, this can be a recipe for failure. 

Successful business partnerships don't focus on their partners for money.  Banks and other financial lending institutions are for that purpose.

If you are a one man operation and feel like you're stuck in a rut, you should consider a partnership as a strategic online profit strategy for success.
 
Although not every business needs a partnership, you can definitely maximize your online profits by having one.

Strategic Online Profit Strategies: Is Getting Started Or Following Through More Important?

One of the most important strategic online profit strategies that is found in every business book you  crack open up these days is to "take action".

Although taking action has long been touted as being the most important thing you need to do; we believe that finishing what you start IS DEFINITELY the most important thing you need to do.

Entrepreneurs that are successful in their online businesses, are the ones that finish what they start.

In fact one of the most common traits found in all successful individuals, is their ability to finish what they start.

The Internet is loaded with business websites that have failed because their owners simply failed to finish or follow through with their business plans.

Finishing what you start is one of the best strategic online profit strategies to generates success.

Virtually every business building resource you find on the Internet will stress "getting started" as the primary goal.

No one ever talks about how critically important it is to finish what you start.

There are a host of consequences to not following through with what you initiate. Some of these are obvious and some hidden but every good intention you have and every effort you make will be undermined by not following through with what you start.

You obviously will not be able to get anything accomplished if you don't follow through. Everyone will tell you that. But that's just the beginning.

• On a personal level, not following through has much greater implications.

Your self image or your perception of yourself will deteriorate if you engage in this type of faulty behavior long enough.

You will eventually begin to see yourself as someone who can't get things done.

This will eventually undermine your self-confidence.

Not following through with what you start will lead to intense frustration and aggravation.

Over time as this continues, it will slowly affect you and eventually damage your motivation to start things or begin new projects.

If you already "know" that you have a penchant for not following through with things, why even bother to start.

Not following through with things leads to procrastination.

• At a business or team level, the effects of not following through can be even more severe.

Team morale will start to deteriorate. You will lose the respect of your employees if they begin to see you as all talk and no action.

Very few employees would consider taking a responsible leadership role when the head of the company can't follow though.

This also gives an unspoken blessing to the entire company not follow through.

Good leadership is all about "doing as I do", not just "doing as I say".

When your employees sense that you don't care or see that you have a lax attitude, you can be assured they will adopt one as well.

If that attitude ever catches on, it will invade every area of your business like a cancer.

Everyone in your company from your marketing and sales team, down to your customer service team, will stop following through trying to implement your goals when they see that you aren't following through with implementing the goals you set for yourself.

Of all the strategic online profit strategies that are touted, not following through is the most self defeating and self destructive to you and your business.

If you ever get into the habit of not following through; not only will you be shooting yourself and your business in the foot, you'll be perceived by your peers as being unreliable, a waste of their time, a bad risk or even worse.

People will not want to work with you or for you.

Is getting started or following through more important?  In our opinion, you need to make following through second nature in your personal life and in your business associations if you expect to become a success.

Strategic Online Profit Strategies: Offering Free Incentives For Sign Ups To Your List

Offering free incentives for sign ups to your email subscription list has become a much more widely used strategy during the current economic downturn.

People love getting anything for free, which is why offering free incentives for sign ups work so well.

There are essentially three strategic online profit strategies for getting visitors to sign up to your list when offering free gifts.

• Signing up to your list before the bonus incentive. 
  
  One of the most frequently used list building methods, is to offer a generous free incentive to visitors who subscribe to your website or newsletter.  In return for your free incentive, visitors give you their email address along with permission to contact them in the future with additional information and other offers.
  
  
• Signing up to your list after the bonus incentive. 
  
  Lately, this list building method is becoming more widely used online. 
  
  With this method links in the document content, video pages, software, or whatever encourages visitors to sign up without requiring them to opt in to get the content.  However, an opt in is necessary if the visitor requests additional information on the topic.
  
  An example of this strategic online profit strategy is to offer Part 1 of a 10 part video course free to your visitor, but in order for them to proceed with Part 2 of the course and forward; they are required to opt in to your list.
  
  This is a very effective method of offering free incentives for sign ups because if your visitor likes what you initially have to offer them, they have the option at that point of either leaving or opting in to your list to receive the remainder of the course. 
  
  Opt ins gathered using this strategic online profit strategy are highly targeted and far more likely to generate future sales from additional offers.
    
• Signing up to your list both before and after providing an incentive.
  
  This method allows you to build a deeper relationship with your reader as they become your subscriber and again when they become your customer. 
  
  Using this strategy, you give free open content to your visitors, get their opt in, and then later reinforce the subscription with additional permissions and opt ins.This advanced method of building a targeted list moves your feed subscribers to email subscriptions by offering them additional benefits over and above your normal daily content. 
  
  Bloggers in particular frequently use the "before and after" incentives strategy of list building.  

Offering free incentives for sign ups to your list works; that's why almost everyone is using them!

Discover The Easiest And Fastest Way To Profit From Your Opt-In List Here.

Strategic Online Profit Strategies For E-mail Marketing

One of the most cost effective strategic online profit strategies in use today is email marketing.

Whether you're raising money for a non-profit, marketing your product or service, promoting an affiliate product, or just keeping your audience engaged; email marketing is probably the cheapest way to reach and keep in contact with your constituents.

Of all the strategic online profit strategies we use, email marketing must be done in an extremely cautious manner or instead of increasing your marketing audience, it can actually turn away your potential clients.

What keeps consumers reading your emails?

What makes your customers unsubscribe from your email list?

Studies show that more than half of consumers report occasionally unsubscribing from their email lists for one reason or another and another 15% report that they frequently unsubscribe from email lists.

There are three reasons most often cited for unsubscribing:

• The unusually high frequency of email messages.

• Receiving content that is perceived as being irrelevant.

• Believing that email addresses are being sold or disseminated to others.

Successful strategic online profit strategies require that you thoroughly understand what your viewers are interested in, what drives their interest, and how often they prefer to receive email correspondence from you before they consider it a nuisance.

To to this and become successful, you need to do some research.

• If you're not already tracking your viewers response to your emails, start doing so immediately.

There are many autoresponder services that track click through rates, read or unread emails, the amount of time that your recipients spend reading each correspondence, deletion rates, etc. and will provide user friendly reports to you in a timely manner.

By tracking your communications, you can determine over time which topics are most interesting to your potential clients and put more focus on those topics.

Over time you will begin to see trends develop with the type of articles that most interest your clients, the tone of those articles and what issues dominate your niche market.

A good strategic online profit strategy would be to then package your information to make it more palatable to your readers.

Packaging information to your readers in a more digestible form will often increase your click through rate and reduce the number of unsubscribers.

• Try conducting surveys with your list to see exactly what they want.

Surveys are one of the best ways to develop honest feedback from your readers and determine what interests them or what irritates them the most.

When the results come in, look at ways you can segregate your email lists to better target your messages. If there are obvious problems with your content, this is the best way to get a handle on it and remedy the situation.

These strategic online profit strategies will allow you to better know your readers needs and significantly decrease the number of unsubscribers from your list.

It's a fact the the majority of consumers use email as their primary online method of communication and although social networks and instant messaging is being used more frequently; email marketing will be here to stay for years to come.

Never underestimate strategic online profit strategies for email marketing.

Core Strategic Online Profit Strategies That Increase Your Impact

Adopting these core strategic online profit strategies can significantly increase your business presence on the Internet with very little cash outlay.

With today's technology revolutionizing the way businesses strategize; you can now reach thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people with just a small dedicated sales team that adheres to some core strategic online profit strategies.

Below are a few core strategic online profit strategies that have been proven effective over the years and are successfully used by thousands of businesses.

• It's imperative that you make your website dynamic and interactive.
  
  You only have a few valuable seconds to make a positive impression and communicate your intent to your visitors. Visitors have come to expect to see the content management systems that most companies are now using, in lieu of traditional static websites.
  
  You need to offer fresh, compelling content to encourage website visitors to return regularly. If possible, try to get your visitors involved with your business in some meaningful way.
  
  Remember that your website is your public face and you may never get another chance to make a positive first impression with your potential customers.

• Managing and consolidating your contacts is one of the often overlooked core strategic online profit strategies that is critical to any business.
  
  It is critical that your business has a system that enables you to manage all your business relationships.
  
  This includes your customers, donors, individual contributors, volunteers, colleagues, business or JV partners, media, elected officials, etc. Many online businesses use some sort of CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) system that enables them to manage all of their business relationships through a single versatile database.
  
  This allows businesses to easily target and personalize email campaigns, newsletters, special offers or promotions, or even fundraising drives if your business is a non-profit organization. Consolidating your contacts also makes it easy to aggregate and track your results.

• Use aggressive email marketing.
  
  Email marketing is one of the most cost effective core strategic online profit strategies available to reach your target audience and your existing customers.
  
  Email marketing gives you a substantial return for every dollar invested. It is timely, highly targeted, cheap, and builds trust and fidelity with your customers.
  
  To ensure that your emails reach a broad base and are well targeted; you need to already have an accurate widely populated CRM system; or acquire your own targeted list using squeeze pages, product giveaways, etc.
  

• Promote online networks and partnerships.
  
  Remember that the more traffic and links you have to your website; the higher your page rank and listing in the relevant search engine results.
  
  Each and every back link and visit to your website counts toward your prominence in the search engine rankings. It is critical to get your website listed on the first page of a relevant search in order to increase your business credibility and visibility.
  
  You can list your business or organization in all relevant directories and if applicable, professional associations, and get a back link to your website whenever possible.
  
  Avoid "link exchanges", but do exchange links with partners and colleagues, especially those that already have a high PageRank. If you are a non profit organization; ask your donors to link to your site.
  
  You can also use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to increase your web presence and use the network of bloggers to your benefit.

• Always monitor the results of your efforts.
  
  Google Analytics is an excellent way to keep tabs on what exactly is driving traffic to your website. It can also spot why traffic is not being driven to your site so you can correct the situation.
  
  It takes time to discover which campaigns work and what doesn't. Monitoring the results of your communications will spotlight which topics peak your audience's interest and which strategies generate the greatest response rate from your customers. What works best for one company is often unique to that company and may not work for your business.
  
  Test and continually refine your strategies until you come up with a winning formula.

These core strategic online profit strategies can significantly increase your business presence on the Internet and improve your bottom line.