While a lot will actual depend upon the type of business you are looking to set-up, the simpler you can make your site, the more chance you have of being successful. Even though we all like to see the flashing graphics and the bells and whistles connected to some sites, do they really impress us after we have seen the first 20 such sites?. Selecting a cheap web hosting deal will also help move your business forward. Or do we just want to get down to business and see what they have to offer?

Over time your view of these sites with great graphics will change, and before too long you will be looking for sites which do what you want, and as quickly as possible. It is common knowledge that the more options which you give a potential customer the more chance of them getting bored and leaving your site without spending. You need to ensure that there is navigation to any page on your site in no more than 3 key presses. You need to ensure that the menu down the left hand side is informative and to the point. That is the way forward…….

If you ask a customer to look for an option, or you don’t let them know what it will do, then there is every chance that you will lose them. Any more than 3 key presses to get to where they want to be will probably result in you losing them. Keep it simple, keep it clean and above all keep it bang on subject – don’t wander off into another area of business because there is no better way to lose a customer, boring them senseless!

The reason is simple, spreading the risk!

If you only have one business online and you are depending upon that for your monthly income, what would you do if it was hacked, if it was down for a day, or if someone bigger and better hit the market, taking all of you customers with them? In reality you would be dead in the water……so what can you do.

While it cannot happen overnight, it would probably be a good idea to try to build up a portfolio of smaller online sites to compliment your main business. When we say compliment, that does not mean they need to be about the same subject, in fact it would probably be better to have them about something totally different so that you can again spread the risk.

It may be useful to be an expert in a particular field, but you cannot beat the support of having a spread of business activities. What would happen if one market were to collapse, as we have seen in the US with the sub-prime credit market, or a large competitor decided to pour big bucks into the market to take the top spot. Could you fight back? Would it be worth it? Do you have the time?

Never depend upon one website (or one client for that matter) for all of your income – spread your exposure and your will feel the benefit in due course.

While there is no doubt that many customers would like sites to take on board fashionable changes where applicable, the need to constantly chase the next trend is a little flawed. The chances are that the people who are following these trends, your potential customers, will have moved on to something else in a few weeks time and left you high and dry.

In reality, if you are looking at a long term business, you are not chasing the next passing customer, you are actually setting up a business which will attract customers TO you. You want to give them what they want, when they want it and in a fashion which makes it very easy to access and understand. Many internet users get used to the look of a site, they know what to expect and more importantly they know their way around. A customer that does not know their way around a site, or cannot easily see where to go, will not spend money. Make it as easy as you can, and you have more chance of bringing in some income.

In the online world of the internet, we are seeing new trends emerging in different areas of business every week, whether it is the use of web 2.0, information sites, switching to the latest affiliate product or direct sales. It is vital that you stay in your comfort zone as much as possible and ensure that you understand what you are offering. If you don’t understand what you are doing, or what you are offering then you have NO chance of any decent income as you will soon be found out.

While there is much to consider, you may like to think about the following before making any decision :-

Affiliate Sales

Pros

- There is no packaging and posting for you to carry out.

- You will not be called upon to sort out any after sales problems.

- There are literally thousands of different programs available.

- A big brand affiliate program can sometimes “sell itself”.

Cons

- You only receive a commission, rather than the full profit per item.

- You will likely only receive commission for a set period per customer. There is a great possibility of missing out on any repeat sales commission.

- Sometimes difficult to track the sales you have referred to the affiliate program. The major affiliate sites are very reliable, although others are some what less reliable.

Direct Sales

Pros

- You will receive the full profit per item, rather than paying a commission to a third party.

- You have full control of what is sold, new product launches, price, etc.

- Repeat orders are very much a part of this income stream.

Cons

- It can be hard work, and potentially expensive packaging and posting items.

- There are lots of costs including storage, insurance, etc.

- It can be expensive to advertise and promote your business / products.

All in all it really does depend what you are looking for, what kind of business you have and how much control you want to keep on sales. There are pros and cons to each of affiliate sales and direct sales, and you will need to balance all of these against what you want and what you have time to do.

While there are many different things to consider such as, the effectiveness of promoting in certain areas, actual profit per sale and the age of your business, many people like to retain a certain percentage of their profit each month (if in profit) to reinvest into the business. However, you should only reinvest into the business when you can see a tangible return on investment. There is no point promoting your site purely so that you can have you name in the public eye – you need to see an increase in sales and a return on your investment.

There are no set rules as to how much you should retain to promote your site, or whether you should actually retain a specific amount of cash for promotion – it is up to you as you are the one who should know where to promote and what kind of return you can expect.

In the early days you may actually need to reinvest all of your profits back into the business, where you can, in order to build for the future. There is no point in bleeding your business dry while it is still young and stunting the potential growth for the future. A company needs to breath, to grow and above all to be fed – the food in this instance is your promotional budget.

When building a house would you just drop one massive building onto a plot of land and that’s it…..no. You need building blocks and for a good online presence your building blocks should consist of either smaller niche areas within a large website, or even better, a number of niche websites all connected by a common theme. This may be football, finance, credit cards or some other sector which is popular but also has a number of other smaller sub-sectors. By building up a presence in a number of these smaller sub-sectors that is how you will BUILD a business,

The super quick speed of the internet has forced many webmasters and would be business people to think exactly the same, at super quick speed. While the business cycle from start to finish may have been shortened dramatically, the theory is still the same, and it still takes time and effort to actually get something moving.

The chances of you hitting on one major sector and doing enough to earn a living are fairly slim, and even if you do make it big initially, the investment and time required to stay there will be enormous. Smaller niche markets are not as expensive to maintain and very often competition can be only a fraction of the larger sites. Remember you are still building a business; you are not creating one over night!

If you remember this theory you should not go too far wrong!

The truth is that many webmasters get a little carried away with their great new ideas, and their enthusiasm can become a little destructive in the end. It can see them spending hour after hour after hour sat by their computer typing away, but often not getting anything finished. Research has shown that it is better to work at projects in short burst, rather than spending hours bent over a screen.

Very often when you are typing and designing / changing the look of your site you can sometimes miss the bigger picture, and you should really take a step back now and again. Does that colour actual go with the site? Does the content make sense? Is it in the right section?

Filling your site with content is fine, but sometimes it is a case of a little less might be more successful, a bit more quality and a little less waffle. Breaks in work are vital when working on a new venture and many people find it easier to actually right ideas down on paper, when they can see them coming together. Don’t forget that not every idea you have will work for our site, some will and some won’t, but you won’t really be able to tell until you see what it looks like, and what it sounds like.

The more tired you get the more of a drop you will see in the quality of your work, and this is very dangerous. You are better having less content, but of a high quality, than loads of content of mixed quality. Anyone can find sub-standard quality on the internet but it is a little trickier finding the good stuff – give yourself a chance and take a break!

It has never been more vital that your site contains content about the latest products, the latest trends and the latest news. Yesterdays must have mobile phone is history tomorrow, it is as brutal as that in the high speed world of the internet. Unless you actually move with the times, the trends and your customers you could see your traffic collapse overnight and quickly see those regular visitors finding somewhere else to go.

So what can you do?

Rather than letting customers find somewhere else to go for tomorrows big seller, make sure that you check the news every day, check you competitors sites and actually see what is selling, what it looking good. There are a selection of blogs available for the latest must have products, and while they may only last a short time, if you are one of the first to market there is the potential to earn some decent income.

Never sit back and think how well you have done because tomorrow is another chapter, another challenge and another day in the life of a webmaster. While the majority of us trading on the net love the thrill and the chase, it can be hard work keeping up with everything – a 24/7 job!

While there are differing views as to how the internet may or may not be affected by the expected downturn in worldwide business activity, there are implications for the internet – but it may not be as bad as people seem to think!

The internet has always been a way to contact your customers, from around the world, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. To many business people it has offered the chance to cut costs to the bone, to introduce more competitive price and also depend upon a number of automated processes. It has effectively, although some will argue otherwise, affected the whole base cost of the traditional business markets.

As the worldwide economy continues to slow, after the credit crunch in the US and housing market slowdown in other areas of the world, consumers and businesses alike will be looking to reduce their expenditure and get more for their money. This opens up the opportunity for more and more internet business, allowing companies to cut back their costs and consumers to get more competitive pricing.

To some extent the internet may be a little insulated against a major worldwide downturn with more consumers and businesses expected to look at the internet as a means to reduce costs and get better value for their money. What ever happens to the worldwide economy, it will be interesting to see how this does effect the internet because the truth is that nobody really knows!

Whatever commercial website you are operating, if you are successful then at some stage you will be faced with a very difficult decision – do you move up to another level, or do you stop growing and trade at a level you can currently cope with? Unfortunately it is not as easy as that because any company which is not growing, not moving with the times, is a company that has started the decent into oblivion – a site which is in effect dying.

This can pose a very difficult decision for any webmasters, the need to start buying products in bulk or entertaining more clients, but needing to find a way to service them all, on time and to the highest quality. In essence, this is the time when you might decide whether to take someone else on to help you with the business, but you do need to be very careful.

There are many people out there who will join up with you, check out how you run your business and copy it. This can lead to another difficult decision, do you employ someone you already know or do you void mixing business and pleasure at all costs?

This is just a small selection of the potential hazards of growing and growing, and while they can be managed easily if you plan ahead, it can be daunting when you need to take on extra risks, while increasing your over heads at the same time. Then again, there could be worse positions to be in – like no customers