There are a number of ways you can obtain content for your website. Some people try good old cut and paste method of ‘borrowing’ information from other sites; however this can get you in trouble for a couple of reasons. First, that information is probably copyrighted and if you’re caught you’ll end up in major trouble. Second, one of rules of good content is that should be original and unique. That means your target audience does not want to see same information on your site that they just viewed on another site.

Free content is available through a number of means on Internet, but again; you’re back to trying to get original content. If you jumped at chance for free web content, how many other people do you think did as well? If you are personally able to write in a professional, coherent and interesting manner, then this may be a good Internet marketing solution. If not, however; your best bet is going to be either persuading a family member or friend who can do it for you or else hire a professional writer. Yes, it costs money to do that. Remember old adage? It takes money to make money.

8. Visitors can't figure out how to place an order: It is surprising as to how many web sites are-not order friendly. Some web masters spend time and money developing fancy web sites with flashy graphics and animation only to forget most important reason for their site's existence. They forget to invite and make it easy for visitors to place orders. I recently visited a site with great enthusiasm after getting an email announcement. It was "must have product" for Internet Marketing. Problem is that there was no order button!

9. Your order buttons, links or contact forms don't work: Test your order pages and contact forms. Be sure that they are not broken links and be sure that your contact forms work by sending yourself a test message and by placing a test order or two. Believe me, even seasoned marketers make this mistake.

10. Your order process is too painful: Try to place an order yourself. Click on one of your order buttons/links and experience process. If they (order pages) load too slowly or process is too painful, you will lose potential customers. This sales losing process is called "abandonment" by industry and affects many online businesses where visitors wanting to become customers suddenly abandon their order in mid-process to do something else.

11. You have unrealistic expectations and need to take a scientific approach to advertising: Don't buy a 100,000 web site visitors package and then expect 100,000 sales. It won't happen unless there was no oxygen left on earth and you just so happen to be selling Oxygen. There are proven formulas that can help you estimate (at best) amount of sales that can be achieved by driving a certain amount of traffic to your site.

Use this simple formula to estimate how many visitors you need to meet your sales/sign-up goals.

A). Figure out your conversion rate: A conversion is = to a visitor that becomes a customer or a sign-up. A conversion rate is defined as number of actual sales or sign-ups divided by number of site visitors in a given period. For example two sales per 100 visitors = 2% or a .02 conversion rate per 100 visitors.

So take a good look at your recent sales and number of visits to your product/service web page. This can be done by taking a look at your web site's statistics. If you make one sale per 100 visitors to your site then you have a conversion rate of 1%. This number, by way, is considered by many average marketers to be difficult to achieve and rightly so. Many web sites, lacking million dollar budgets, are happy to get a tenth (.001) of a percent. Still, anything is possible. We are using 1% in this calculation to make example easier to understand (the industry average is said to be 1% to 2%)

B). Figure out how many sales/sign-ups you want (quantity--not dollar value)

C). once you have this info, plug your numbers into equation below.

Number of Visitors = Desired Number of Sales / Conversion Rate (in decimal)

So as an example: To sell 200 items at a conversion rate of 1%

Number of visitors = 200/.01 (200 divided by .01)

The minimum number of visitors required = 20,000

Therefore, you would need at least 20,000 visitors (minimum) to get 200 sales, assuming that you can convert your visitors with a hot offer! The "right words" can convert "right visitors" into paid customers. Just as easily as wrong words can turn them away. Sometimes a single word can make a difference. If you can raise your conversion rate by applying ideas in this article, you can also reduce your cost of Customer Acquisition.

The information above is certainly not exhaustive, I'm sure that there are other reasons that I did not list in this article. Regardless, if taken seriously, information contained herein will help boost your sales and sign-ups.

Just remember this final thought. "Sales are never guaranteed. no one can guarantee that a customer will put funds into your bank account" You can, however, increase your probability of success by becoming informed and then taking positive action.

Hamoon Arbabi shows webmasters how to succeed in online business. Visit his collection of marketing resources at: http://homebusiness.nexuswebs.net .Click and find out more !!!