The Online Biz Guy: September 2008

Thursday, September 18, 2008

How To Start An Internet Business In 3 Easy Steps (And What Holds You Back) - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Is Your Online Business Generating Enough Backlinks?

By Kristina Crosby"

There is nothing quite as important as generating traffic to your website with internet marketing. While there are several ways you can generate traffic, it is vital you have as many website backlinks as possible. The problem is many do not know how to create backlinks for their business.

It really does not matter how you get backlinks, just as long as you have links on the internet for people to get to your website. You probably have heard that all traffic is good traffic or all backlinks are good backlinks. While this is true, there is such thing as wasted backlinks as well.

The point is you want to get your links in places where people who may be interested in your website will be. There is no point in getting backlinks in a gardening category or website if you have a home business website. Place your links in logical places that give you the best chance to increase your traffic volume.

There are several ways you can create backlinks that will better your business. An extremely effective method is to post in forums that give you the opportunity to create a signature. This way every time you post in those forums, you have a link in your signature that people can see.

One of the more common methods is writing articles and submitting them to article directories. You can then place your website link in the resource box giving you a website backlink. As you submit your article to article directories, you can place them in specific categories to reach your target market.

If you are looking to get your link on a particular website that already receives a lot of traffic, you can do a couple of things. You can pay to have a text link or a banner ad placed on their website. Or you can offer to give the site owner something for free like an e-book or web content in return for a free link.

Perhaps the most common method, though, is link exchanges. This involves you trading your link for another website owner's link. You are agreeing to place their link somewhere on your website for them placing your link on theirs. The hope is visitors to their site will see your link and make their way to your website.

Web site backlinks are crucial to having success with an online business. It gives people that more of a chance to find their way to your website. And with the competition online as stiff as it is, it is up to you to do whatever you can to set your business apart from the rest.

This is both an exciting and frightening time for me as I wade through this virtual online world of Internet entrepreneurs. I invite you to visit my blog and leave any questions or comments you might have.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Crosby

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Building Niche Sites That Sell

By Khaled Taleb"

When selling one product on a website, you do not need to create a fifty page website complete with flashy ads, lots of graphics, and other tricks that other online businesses do to increase awareness of their site. Because your product will be popular for a shorter amount of time, spending hours and hours finding the right fonts, creating articles, and customizing the sequence of the pages is not worth it.

Keep in mind that your niche group is hungry for information they are unable to find anywhere else. This means they will not need as much encouragement and pushing to place an order.

If you are the only game in town, chances are you will receive business regardless of whether you have pretty graphics and expert formatting on your website. A simple site that highlights the features and benefits of the product will do well.

You do not have to be a computer genius to create a professional looking website that promotes your products.

Since you will be using other forms of marketing including PPC, keywords on your site, and joining forums and creating blogs, your website will mostly be used as a platform to accept payment after a customer orders your product.

Your web host will have many templates to choose from when the time comes to build your site. Most niche marketing sites contain a sales letter page explaining the benefits of purchasing the product.

Sales letters also include links to purchasing your product; offer a free gift, or bonus report that entices people to make a purchase immediately.

Images of your product will also help when making a sale. Depending on the amount of information you want to share with visitors, most sales letters are between two and eight pages/screens long.

Another benefit of niche marketing is that you don't have to spend days creating a website. By using templates, writing an effective sales letter/page, and adding a few images, you can create an efficient website in a day or less.

And that resource is my e-book "Developing A Niche: What Does It Take ?" This is indeed an amazing book that will teach you everything you need to know about identifying and developing your very own niche market for generating sure-fire profits and wealth. Everything in this book comes from the real life, real world experiences of successful business owners who are just people, exactly like you.

Don't worry about your level of education or business experience, because whether you are a seasoned businessperson or a complete newbie to the world of niche markets and online sales, this book contains the vital information you need to succeed. It takes you step by step through the right processes to identify and develop the hugely profitable niche market that will generate the huge profits you want and deserve.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Khaled_Taleb

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Form Submissions Without Submit Buttons

By William Bontrager

When you want a form that can be submitted without requiring the rather prominent submit button, this article shows you how, with several methods:

Submitting a form with a regular link.
Submitting a form when a checkbox is checked.
Automatically submitting a form.

This article contains step-by-step instructions with code examples. I think you'll find it easy to follow.

The article assumes you already have a working form that is submitted to a CGI program in the conventional manner, with a submit button. When you see "/cgi-bin/script.cgi" in the examples, substitute the URL of your CGI program.

If you don't already have form and CGI program, consider Master Feedback from http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/ to have the submitted information sent to you via email, or Master Form V3 from http://willmaster.com/master/formV3/ for a program that can also store form information in a database on your server.

Submitting a Form With a Regular Link

With this method, you can cause a form to be submitted when the user clicks on a regular link, which can be a text link or an image link.

This requires two steps.

First step, the form —

Give your form a name. This is done in the FORM tag itself:

<form
   name="MyForm"
   method="POST"
   action="/cgi-bin/script.cgi">

Second step, the JavaScript —

Create a link containing the submit command:

<a href="javascript:document.MyForm.submit();">
Click to submit the form
</a>

Optional third step —

You can remove the submit button or, to be kind to the few non-JavaScript browsers that visit your site, put it between NOSCRIPT tags:

<noscript>
<input type="submit" name="Click here">
</noscript>

The above will display the submit button only when non-JavaScript browsers visit the page.

Submitting a Form When a Checkbox is Checked

We'll use a checkbox to demonstrate how to cause a form to be submitted when the user does something with a form field. When the checkbox is checked, the form submits.

(Actually, the submission occurs when the checkbox is clicked, which would be a check if it was previously unchecked or would be an uncheck if it was checked.)

This requires two steps.

First step, the form —

Give your form a name and add the checkbox. The checkbox would probably have instructive text. Example:

<form
   name="MyForm"
   method="POST"
   action="/cgi-bin/script.cgi">
<input
   type="checkbox"
   name="MyCheck"
   onClick="DoSubmission();">
   Check when done with form

Second step, the JavaScript —

<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"><!--
function DoSubmission() {
document.MyForm.submit();
}
//--></script>

Put the JavaScript anywhere on your page, in the HEAD or BODY area, above or below the form.

Optional third step —

As in the "Submitting a Form With a Regular Link" section, above, you can remove the submit button or keep it between NOSCRIPT tags for non-JavaScript browsers.

Automatically Submitting a Form

If you only want to log CGI environment variables, and/or set a cookie, a form submission without actually sending information to the CGI program could be appropriate. Otherwise, the form should have information to submit before it is submitted, whether automatically or by manual click.

In other words, we'll have to figure out a way to get information into the form before it's automatically submitted.

Information that's available to put into the form are things like the current web page URL and the time zone information from your visitor's computer. The latter is a way to determine which geographical time zones your visitors are at — except those who have incorrect clocks and/or time zone information specified for their computers.

This requires two steps.

First step —

Put a form with a name into your web page. There must be one hidden field for each item of information you want to automatically fill with information and submit, current URL and time zone offset are in our example:

<form
   name="MyForm"
   method="POST"
   action="/cgi-bin/script.cgi">
<input
   type="hidden"
   name="ThisPageURL"
   value="">
<input
   type="hidden"
   name="TimeZoneOffset"
   value="">
</form>

You'll need to add a hidden field to let your CGI program know the URL of the "thank you" page it should use.

Put the form anywhere in the BODY tag. It won't be visible, but it will cause the browser to print a blank line.

Second step, the JavaScript —

Somewhere below the form, put the following JavaScript code:

<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"><!--
document.MyForm.ThisPageURL.value = document.URL;
var x = new Date();
document.MyForm.TimeZoneOffset.value = x.getTimezoneOffset();
document.MyForm.submit();
//--></script>

When the page is loaded, the JavaScript will automatically fill in the form with the web page's URL and the time zone offset information from your visitor's computer, and then automatically submit the form. After processing the form information, the CGI program presents a "thank you" page.

The time zone offset is the number of minutes plus (West) or minus (East) of Greenwich Mean Time.

Optional third step —

Because the automatic submission of the form will load a different page (don't have the "thank you" page be the same page, re-loaded, or it will submit the form each time the page loads, in an infinite loop), you may want to put your automatic form submission page into an IFRAME tag. The "thank you" page can then be an image or other content that you want to display on the page.

To make an IFRAME tag, put this into a web page (a web page different than the web page with the automatically submitted form):

<iframe
   height="300"
   width="200"
   src="WebPageContainingAutomaticForm.html">
</iframe>

Adjust the URL so the web page containing the automatically submitted form loads into the IFRAME tag. And adjust the height and width to accommodate the "thank you" page.

The web page with the automatically submitted form will load into the IFRAME and, after automatic submission, load the "thank you" page.

(Netscape versions 4.# and earlier don't recognize the IFRAME tag. It's ignored, as if it wasn't there — no extra space, no content, nothing.)

Notes

If you decide to test several of the above examples on the same web page, give the forms different names. Otherwise, the browser is likely to become confused about which information belongs to which form.

Have fun with the examples. Once you're familiar with how they work, you can decide whether or not they can be adapted to your unique requirements.

Will Bontrager

Copyright © Bontrager Connection, LLC

About the Author:

William Bontrager Programmer/Publisher, "WillMaster Possibilities" ezine mailto:possibilities@willmaster.com

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