How To Save BIG In Your Online Business

When you're first starting an online business, it can be a
struggle finding the money to invest in the things that will
grow your business most. Only later do you discover things
all the guru's know that could have saved you a small fortune.
Here are a few things that will help you save on Internet
marketing business necessities.

In order to be in business on the Internet you DO need a
website. Hosting that website doesn't need to cost you an
arm and a leg. Here are two ways to save:

1) Don't register your domain through your web host. Instead
go to a discount registrar. Your web host will charge you up
to $40 or more (per year) just to conveniently handle your
domain name registration. You can register or renew your
domain name yourself for as little as $8 per year. I've set
up a service for my subscribers and clients to do just that at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/domains/

How am I able to offer you such a bargain? I have a domain name
reseller account at Wild West Domains. For around $100 per
year, practically anyone can become a domain name reseller.
You are charged a wholesale price for domain name registrations
(and other services offered on my site above). You decide how
much you want to mark up your prices above that. I have
practically no markup because I enjoy helping beginners get off
to a good start. I know that you'll be back for other products
and services that I offer - after you're a big success :-)

2) Consider getting a web hosting account here:
http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=119107

I have an account that lets me host up to 50 domains for only
$109 per month. That equates to about $2 per domain, per month.
The $109 package that I have gives me 4400 meg of disk space and
100 gigabytes of monthly bandwidth to spread among my 50 domains
in that account any way that I want to.

The account above is intended for people who want to open their
own web-hosting business. Basically, you can get one of these
accounts and then charge your online or local customers whatever
price you choose. Find 50 local customers and charge them $100
each and you've just turned $109 into $5000. That's a nice
monthly revenue stream and it's also in-line with what offline
businesses expect to pay.

The above account isn't for everyone. It doesn't come with a
lot of free tech support. You have to go through some o­nline
tutorials and then you're the tech support. If you need help,
you can get it through an o­nline forum or through a trouble
ticket system (where you pay by the minute). When o­ne of your
customers needs help, their trouble tickets go to you. If you
pass them along to the parent company, you are billed by the
minute.

I use the above account to host many of my own domains. I have
numerous very simple sites that are only a few pages. Some are
only a one-page sales letter. I save a bundle by paying only $2
per month to host these. When you're paying only $2 per month for
hosting you don't need to make a lot of sale for a site to be
profitable.

Another necessity is basic Internet access. For that I use my
local cable company but I also have a backup dialup connection.
That account, which offer decent service cost me less than $10
per month. Because I transfer many 30 meg or larger files back
and forth regularly, this account probably isn’t robust enough
to be my primary. However, my local cable company does sometimes
have outages for various reasons. That's when I use this dialup
account most. I also use it sometimes while I'm traveling. You
can checkout the company I use at:
http://47928.yourdialupservice.com/
They offer thousands of local access numbers in the U.S. and
Canada.

I have not located a comparable resource for outside the U.S. and
Canada, but will pass it along when I do.

Another way to save big is to get your own merchant account.
When you use Paypal or Clickbank, your initial investment may be
less. However you pay much higher processing fees, and your less
professional appearance DOES cost you sales. Savvy customers who
understand Clickbank and Paypal will recognize that you're not
processing enough volume to consider a merchant account
worthwhile. They may consider you an amateur that they don't want
to risk major purchases with.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't use Paypal or Clickbank when
you first start out and you're not confident that your product
will even sell. I AM saying that "when you're ready to run with
the big dogs, you need to look like o­ne of them." Top marketers
that I know who are processing tens of thousands, and even
hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in credit card
transactions use: http://WarriorProcessing.com Take a look at
the site and you'll see why it's who we use.

As you get your online business rolling, the other thing you'll
need is traffic. When you first get started, the fastest way to
get it is from the pay-per-clicks. I use Google AdWords to drive
initial traffic to all of my sites when I need that traffic fast.
That allows me to quickly get enough traffic to test and improve
my conversion rate. None of the other pay-per-clicks usually
deliver the volume of traffic that I want quickly enough.

After I refine things using Google AdWords, I do set up accounts
at some of the other pay-per-clicks. I use Google AdWords at
first because I place a very high value on my time and I don't
want to spend months just getting enough traffic to refine the
sales process on a single site.

Unless you have lots of free time, I wouldn't waste time on any
other traffic source initially EXCEPT for the one I am using
right here. Writing and submitting articles to ezines and article
directories has proven the single best source of free traffic for
me. It works so well that I've written over 300 articles on
various aspect of Internet marketing. To prove that this works,
just enter my name at any search engine. You'll see millions of
returns and most of them are simply from my article writing
activities.

The other thing that will save you time is studying and
practicing copywriting. Minor improvement in your web copy can
easily increase your conversion rate by 100 times. Not learning
copywriting is practicing false economy for most of us. If only
1 out of every 200 visitors to your site buys and just by
changing a headline you can change that to 1 in 20, that shows
just how important copywriting is. There have been countless
documented cases of people getting improvements this dramatic
from minor but important improvement in their web copy.

To learn copywriting, I went through and highly recommend Yanik
Silver's Ultimate At-Home Internet Copywriting Workshop. This
will be your largest initial expense, but it's a necessary one.
Words sell, and if you're not willing to learn to use words
properly in your marketing, then you probably shouldn't waste
time setting up a website.

You can get all of the details on this course at:
http://www.ultimateonlinecopymanual.com

We've just gone over a number of way that you can dramatically
cut the expenses associate with operating your online business.
I'm willing to bet that I've just told you things that NO onE
else has told you. They aren't all trying to take advantage of
you. However, they are hoping that out of ignorance you'll spend
more on the same items through them. Save that money and plow it
back into growing your business.

Copyright © 2005 Willie Crawford
Internet Business Success Course
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This article is excerpted from Willie Crawford's Revised, Free
20-lesson Internet Business Success Course. To sign up for the
entire course today, simply visit: http://WillieCrawford.com