It is true that the lure of starting the e-commerce business is powerful. An endeavor as such usually requires little or no capital investment, a credit card processing account, and rudimentary knowledge of HTML coding. These three elements compose the basic formula for starting an e-commerce business. There is a marked difference in the formula for starting a business and the formula for maintaining a business. To expound on the latter, what truly makes a business thrive is proper customer relationship management and immediate telephone / live voice account support. This is the key component that is missing from most on-line or “virtual” businesses.

Take, for instance, the internet based company Netflix. If you are unfamiliar with the company, they are a relatively young e-commerce business specializing in mail order DVD rental. The minds behind the ingenious idea that is the basis of Netflix failed to create telephone support for their product. There is no doubt this decision was a calculated one as they most likely weighed the cost of maintaining an in-house call center vs. integrating purely e-mail based support.  Without looking at the numbers side of the argument, imagine the frustrated consumer having problems with their order and having to rely on a 24 hour lagged e-mail response system to rectify their account issues. Based on this plausible conjecture, I believe lack of live operator support will be the ruin of the Netflix organization and the downfall of all e-commerce businesses that follow the same train of thought. What these businesses do not realize is that it is possible and extremely cost effective to outsource your call center needs to an established advanced call center facility. This solution has a two fold benefit. It serves to establish a solid foundation of customer relationship management and opens businesses up to benefit from word of mouth advertising.

I believe even a small internet business can greatly benefit from utilizing a call center to manage their customer service or sales calls. The initial investment is usually zero (excluding research time to find the appropriate facility) and most call centers charge on a per call basis (meaning you only get charged for the calls they actually receive). If looking at business from the customer’s perspective as opposed to looking at it from an initial profit standpoint, it behooves all e-commerce businesses to initially setup a live call center to manage all of their calls. If the infrastructure is not initially setup correctly, your business may fail before it has even begun.

The key to getting your site indexed in the big three is getting links pointing to it from sites that are already indexed. When the search bots crawl those sites they will inevitably find the link to your site and your site will be added to their index. Follow these five steps a month before you launch and you’ll be a step ahead of the game.

1. Register your domain name. You’d be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to do this. The sooner you register your domain, the sooner you can get some quality links pointing to it and get it indexed.

2. Put up a home page. Make a “coming soon” page with your logo, information about your site, and expected launch date. You can also add a form for people to sign up for email updates about your site. This starts building your email marketing list before you even launch.

3. Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner. Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account at http://www.feedburner.com/. Under ‘Publicize’ in your account make sure to sign up for ‘Ping Shot’. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.

4. Write a few articles and submit to directories.  Regardless of what your site is about, there is certainly a topic relating to your site that you could write an article about. For example, if your site is going to sell fitness equipment, you could write an article about how to build a home-gym. Or if you are going to rate and review new cars, you could write an article about how to shop for a new car.  After you’ve written and proofread your articles, submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles (http://www.ezinearticles.com/) and iSnare (http://www.isnare.com/). Be sure to include a description of your new site and a link back to it in the resource box. Again, this should result in a few links to your site.

5. Get a link from an indexed site. Steps 3 and 4 should result in some links from indexed sites which should then ensure your site to be indexed. But it can’t hurt to get a few more on your own to be certain. When I launched my last site, I linked to it from my personal blog, which I knew was indexed. If you don’t have that option, you can ask someone with a blog or site related to yours to mention it. If you can’t find anyone willing to do it for free, you could offer them some free advertising on your site when you launch in exchange for the link.

Getting yourself indexed before you launch gives you a head start on your SEO and will allow your site to have a more immediate impact. Why wait until you launch? Get started a month early and you’ll reap the benefits when launch day rolls around.

The Look

The first building block for a successful blog is The Look. What this means is that your blog should start with an appropriate style. You can begin when you first start your blog. Many blogging software programs will help you out with the style of your blog. If you are using a blogging program that caters most to beginners, you will see that it will offer different templates for you to choose. There will be something for everyone. You can go through the templates to choose which colors you like best for the layout. Experiment with the layouts to see which templates look best on the computer screen. You can always go back and change the template later if you want to change the look of your blog. Make sure that if you are creating your own blog, without using a pre-created template that you make it look as professional as possible. You can even hire a professional to do the job for you if you wish. The more professional your blog looks, the more seriously your readers will take your posts.

The Content

The content of your blog is the second key building block you will need for a successful blog. While you can choose to create posts that have no direction or purpose, you will find that when you post interesting commentary or short information filled articles that your traffic will increase. Although you may think it is interesting, most readers will not enjoy reading about your day to day activities, unless you make them into humorous stories.

It should also be noted that the more content you have on your site, the more successful your site will be. It is basically a numbers game at this point. The more you post, the more chances you will have the one of your posts will attract the eye of someone searching for a related topic.

The Ads

The third building block is advertising. Bloggers can make a steady income using advertising on their blogs. The trick is to have a good mixture of ads and content however. If you fill your blog with ads and have no content for readers, they will be distracted and not visit your site again. A good rule to remember is that you should never have more than two or three ads per blog page. This is an important rule to remember. You should not overwhelm you readers with ads. You should only present them so that the readers can further explore them if they wish. Don’t use flashing ads or other bold ads that will annoy your readers. Choosing the right type of advertising program is part of it as well. Look into an easy to use program such as Google Adsense if you want a quick way to get started in the advertising arena.

The Dedication

The most important building block of a great blog is dedication. You must be willing to be dedicated to the blog. You have to put in the time and energy to get positive results. Even if you have the other three components, unless you take the time to update your posts each day, you will not be getting optimum results. Dedication can help a lot. It can hide the fact that you are a beginner and allow you to create a beautiful and functional blog. No matter how little experienced you are dedication can cover that up. You can have a great blog as long as you take the time to give some of your energy to the project.

Testimonials – Ropers and shills typically write these for scams, not satisfied customers.

Documented Proof – Some questionable paid survey sites provide checks and other documentary replications as “proof.” But just because someone made money at least once, doesn’t mean that you will. Besides, with today’s computer technology, anybody can counterfeit just about any document and make it look authentic.

Guarantees – Don’t believe guarantees that promise the Moon. paid survey sites can’t possibly guarantee you much of anything, except that they’ll refund your fees if you’re not satisfied. But good luck collecting your refund if it’s a paid surveys scam.

Reliable- and Trusted-Site Logos – Some questionable paid survey sites display these logos to indicate that they are self-regulating in compliance with the standards represented by the logos. But even legit logos can be stolen, such as those trademarked by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), with a simple right-click of the computer mouse. Click the logos to see where they lead. If they don’t lead to valid reports at reputable sites (such as the BBB’s official, national reliability site, the URL for which begins with https://www.bbbonline.org/) or the reports are unfavorable, be wary.

The “fine print” at questionable paid survey sites often contradicts much of what their hype implies. (That’s how they try to cover themselves legally.) Don’t let the hype alone sell you. Read all of the fine print too and ask questions if it’s vague or you don’t understand it. Think twice about submitting your personal information to any paid surveys site that does not provide a clear privacy policy or arouses your suspicion in any other way. Also read disclaimers, terms, conditions and any other fine print. Avoid sites that don’t answer your questions in a satisfactory and timely manner. Be wary of conducting business with sites that list only email or PO box addresses for questions and other matters, as they might be fly-by-night, paid survey scams.

Perform “whois” lookups to reveal if paid survey sites were registered by proxy. If so, be wary of doing business with them too. Site owners might be hiding their contact information behind proxy services, because they’re running paid survey scams. Whois lookups will also tell you if different sites were launched by the same owners (unless they were registered by proxy). If so, be wary about that too. Owners might have launched multiple sites so to make their “industry” appear to be more legit, dupe you into buying the same list of paid surveys more than once, or both.

Check with the BBB for complaints against specific online paid survey sites and their owners. But, be aware that, just because there are no complaints, it doesn’t mean that all who have conducted business with the sites are 100-percent satisfied. It just means that no one has yet complained to the BBB about those specific sites. More about that is below.

Browse scam forums, such as Scam.com and RipOffReport.com, for messages from consumers who think they’ve been duped by online paid survey scams. But, proceed with caution. Some messages are posted by ropers and shills pretending to “rescue” those who’ve been duped by paid survey scams or who are looking to avoid it. For example, the “rescuers” might say that all online paid surveys are scams, except for the “wonderful opportunities” they’ve found. But, what they don’t tell you, is they profit from recommending the “wonderful opportunities”. (The same goes for many sites that claim to screen out paid survey scams.) Scam-forum moderators typically remove such messages. But, natch, they’ll remain posted until the moderators screen them.

For more information about avoiding scams, see the consumer advice from the FTC and BBB. But, although both have issued general warnings about easy-money schemes (such as work-at-home and Internet business-opportunity scams), at this writing neither has specifically warned about online paid surveys. To issue specific warnings, both agencies typically require many complaints in short order. But many victims don’t file complaints, because they’re embarrassed that they were duped. Additionally, online paid surveys are a fairly new easy-money scheme at this writing. So, the agencies might not have collected enough complaints to issue specific warnings. But this writer is willing to bet that it won’t be long before they do.

If you’ve been ripped-off by online paid survey scams, as indicated you may file complaints with the FTC and BBB. You may also file complaints with the U.S. government’s Internet Fraud Complaint Center.

One of the questions I get most often is how to tell whether a work from home job posting is a scam or a legitimate job. There are some warning flags. In addition, there are sites that can help you determine what’s a real work at home job and what isn’t.

About a decade ago, online businesses boomed and since then many people who wanted to make some extra buck turned to the internet. Some are legitimate businesses who sell products and skills and some are fraud sites that steal and harass people.

An example of these fraud schemes is the Make Money Fast or MMS schemes. This scheme is very much like chain letters forwarded to people. Make money fast will often claim that it is legal and promises vast sums of money in a short period. It will promise you with too good to be true investment opportunities.

People, especially those who are unlucky are easily deceived into joining this kind of frauds. So why do people believe such things? The only explanation is that they think these schemes are true and that they can afford it.

People tend to think “what do I have to lose?” and another thing is, almost everyone would love to make easy money.

Make money fast schemes usually come in the form of an email. The contents of the letter states that you should send money to some or all the names on the list then include your own name and send the email to other people.

Here are some basic contents in Make Money Fast emails:
• It will usually start with a greeting from the person who created the letter.

• This scheme will include some testimonials from “investors” that will say that it made them a millionaire or made their life easier.

• It will include a list of names and addresses.

• It will state that you have to send a specified amount of money (usually a small amount of money) to some or all the people on the list.

• It instructs you to forward the email to as many people as possible and modify the list of names by placing your own name and address at the bottom and removing one at the top.

• It will usually claim that it is legal and will promise you a return on your investment.

There are several variations of this scheme. One common type is that it will instruct you to send money to people as payment for reports.

It will always claim that it is legal and some will include section of the law to confirm the legality, when in fact the very same law will state that it is illegal.

There are also websites that offer these schemes, and often it will look very attractive and legitimate to lure people in investing. It will display pictures of people smiling and will include testimonials. Keep in mind that these are just photos which can be purchased for cents at various graphic sites and also be aware that anyone can make testimonials.

Although some of these websites are legitimate and offer true business opportunities, most are fraudulent. Before you invest, here are some tips on how to distinguish fraudulent sites from legitimate ones.

Fraudulent sites will often offer investment return and big profits that sound too good to be true. An example is that some will offer to convert your $20.00 investment into $50,000.00 in a matter of days and some even millions.

Find out if there is at least a reliable contact address on the website. If it is legitimate, it will include a legitimate phone number and address of the person. Call the phone number and wait for someone to answer to find out if it is in fact legitimate.

Research the website on internet forums to find out if it is a legitimate website or blacklisted. You can also find out if the forums you visited and the website are fraudulent by tracking the IP address. If the IP addresses are the same then it is fraud.

Keep in mind that not all offers on the internet are true. Save yourself from frustration and losing money, and always research before investing in any kind of businesses!

Many programs on the Internet promise you big money for just a little effort. These are not always what they seem so be prepared to research carefully any programs that promise something for nothing.

You can make money on-line in many different ways; some don’t take much effort on your part, but remember you get what you put into it.

Affiliate marketing is a way to make some extra cash from your website. You are partnering with someone else to sell their goods from your website. You receive a portion of the proceedings from each sale that is created from your website.

Another way to receive revenue from your website with little effort is to add advertising. Banner ads can bring you income from both the business that is generated from the advertisement and a click through rate based on how many “click” through to the advertised site.

One of the best ways to make fast money online is to sell items on any of the auction sites. There are a few you can look at; one of the biggest is eBay. It doesn’t take a longtime to set up an account and you can start making money immediately.

Other methods of making money online are:

1. Start a referral system.
2. Connective employers with possible new employees.
3. Write weblogs.
4. Take surveys.

Diligent research and steadily working on it can make you a good second income. Find what you are best suited for and run with the idea!

All I have to say is that it is not that easy building highly profitable websites online. But, you can learn how to build a website, that will be fully optimized for the search engines and highly profitable in a couple of weeks, using the same simple tricks I use daily. It doesn’t matter if you want to build a website for free or for profit.

To win online, you have to build a website that gets free traffic from the search engines, and implement all other simple traffic methods like: posting to forums, using ads in ezines, submitting your site to link directories, writing reviews for other peoples products, reciprocal linking and pay per click.

First you have to learn how to do your onsite optimization, and for that you will have to:

1) Insert your keyword into the title of your page

It amazes me how many sites online don’t have their main keyword in the title page. Just make sure to always include your main keyword in the tile page of your site.

2) Add Meta Tags

Not as important as it used o be, but I like to include it in every site I build. Add Description meta tags and your keywords meta tags.

Use one or two keywords per page only. Add your main keyword into your page description.

3) H1 Header Tags

Use your H1 header tag on each page, I always like to use a smaller font size, like 14pt.

4) H2/H3 Header Tags

Try and use at least one H2 or H3 Tags within the first three or four paragraphs

5) Last and First Paragraph

Make sure to start your first paragraph with your main keyword and to end your last paragraph with your keyword

6) Bold, Italize ad Underline your keyword

You must Italize and bold your main keyword just once, and you must use your main keyword to link out of your site to another website (use that link to create an underline keyword) , at least once.

7) The Alt Image Tag

Well, this is very useful if you have pictures that you will be including on your site. Try to use the Alt Image Tag for your pages, I use the alt image tag on my website header.

Those are the only onsite optimization tips that you should use on each and every site you build. Try to not make it look too obvious, and over do your web site optimization. Learn to build a website the easy way by just following the simple tips I have outline here.

For more optimization tips, try to get your hands on VEO Report by Colin Mc. Dougal. This is the best and most understandable guide to building fully optimized websites online.

I will leave you with one tip I learnt from The VEO report; Before you add any affiliate links to your website, you must first build a website that focus on pure content and include an about you page, and then submit that site to the open directories, like DMOZ.org, etc. After your website has been added to those free directories then you can add your affiliate links and start building reciprocal links and the above mentioned traffic methods will deliver even more traffic.

http://www.veoreport.com/

Now that you know how to build a website for fun and profit, it is time to learn by actually doing something with the information you just read. Go build your first website, the second will be better and your third will be a master piece.

By being educated on what you’re looking for. When you’re looking for the right directories to list in, use the following guidelines.

1. Everyone lists in free directories. Why not? You can list in as many as you want, and you’re not losing anything by doing so. Free directories include Yahoo! and Dmoz, as well as hundreds of others who either use their own listings or license listings from Yahoo! and Dmoz. You shouldn’t stop here, though, especially if you’re running a commercial website.

2. The more directories you’re listed in, the more inbound links to your website you’ve got. And the more inbound links your website has, the higher the search engines will rank your page. Make sure when you create your directory listing to use your keywords in the text; in some search engines, this will help your ranking as well.

3. Some of the free directories are not being listed well by Google and other standard search engines. This is not because of some nefarious competitive advantage, but because the free directories often look like search engine spam or because they don’t optimize their sites well. The paid directories are careful to watch for this; after all, the more hits they get, the more they can charge for their services.

4. After listing in all the free directories – which you should, as it costs you nothing but a little time – you should start listing in the better paid directories. Even though you have to pay to get in them, they give you an edge that the free ones don’t. For one thing, they’re more exclusive, and customers won’t be looking at your competitors as much. For another, as noted above, the directory will probably place higher in a search engine. And they tend to be specialized. If you sell medical equipment, listing in a medical equipment directory will almost certainly be a worthwhile investment.

5. If you list in really good and specific directories with proven traffic from customers you want to draw, you’re investing your money in the right place. A few good quality links will draw the perfect customers for your business. Finding the right directory is hard, but search for directories that specialize in your industry and in industries that cross into yours; for instance, if you provide medical equipment, don’t overlook listings for scientific and laboratory equipment.

6. The next generation of directories is here now. With sites like MSN’s Small Business Directory, targeted searching for exactly what you want is easier than ever before. In addition, many of the newer directories offer you additional small business tools, more information, specialized content for your industry, and many other services. You’ll only find these with paid directories.

What do you do then? How do you know which book suits you? And if you even could figure that out, how do you know the book is worth anything? Many of the authors are pros, but, then, you can also easily land up on amateur writers who are just trying to make a buck. Exactly for this, we have compiled a list of five practical suggestions to help you.

1) Reviews and Opinions Matter.
One of the most interesting methods of screening authors and books is by reading what other readers have to say about those literary objects. Look up one of the many forums online that focus on books and either ask a direct question or read what others have said. Another option is to look up the book at different online bookstores such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon but also others such as The Literary Guild and Pickabook. (Look them at this list compiled by the World Wide Web Virtual Library: http://archive.museophile.org/bookstores) The reasons for doing this is that for every book you can read reviews from different sites. Do this and you are reducing the chances of reading only promotional material. It goes without saying that opt for those books that receive good reviews. Generally, a book will receive some bad reviews, but look at the majority viewpoint. Note that if the book you wish to buy is new, you will not find reviews. In such a case, you will just have to take a risk.

2) Be Specific.
One of the methods of searching for a book that interests you is by narrowing down the search by typing a long search term and not just one name. For instance, type down how to play Texas holdem in an online tournament instead of just Texas holdem. Such a search will result in only a few book options. First, look up reviews and views on it and then look at its size and focus of interest.

3) Check the Experience of the Author.
Buying a book is just like buying a car. Would you be willing to pay more for a Mercedes? Likewise, check the author or editor. If the author is unknown, tread very carefully. The book might be useless. But remember that its not enough that the author is well known or has years of professional expertise, they must be experienced in the exact field of the subject of the book.

4) Check the Printing History of the Author.
After checking the authors personal biography and his scope of knowledge as pertains to the issue in question, you should, then, check his style of writing. You will not want to fall asleep on the second page, do you? If their style of writing pleases you, try reading parts of their work. Read articles or portions of other books they have read. Do this to get an idea of whether they can write and whether they are capable of handling complicated issues and putting them across in easy to understand language.

5) The Price Factor.
When looking at books, the first thing (or the second) we tend to look at is the price. Yes, you should know whether you can afford to buy it or not, but do not make you decision based on whether a book is cheap or expensive. First, check whether the book is what you are looking for. Then, decided whether you can afford it and not vice versa. Likewise, do not just buy a book because its on sale. Remember that if a book is on sale it means that no one is buying it!