3) JUMP IN. GET YOURSELF A SOLID INTERNET PRESENCE

"You'll seldom experience regret for anything that you've done. It is what you haven't done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self- defeating ways means you've lost them forever." -- Wayne Dyer

A solid Internet presence does not include one of those free pages with address’s that read something like this www.imtoocheaptogetmyown/members/freepages/myname.htm. Now I may be exaggerating slightly but not much. My very first webpage address was 48 characters long. Yes, page was FREE, but results reflected that too (one $5.00 sale). They’re okay for personal pages and fooling around, but not if you want to be taken seriously. You really must acquire your own domain. No ifs, ands or buts about it!

Once you have; decided on a product or service, reserved site name, and made your best deal on domain space, you’re ready to start marketing. The next order of business is to start design of site. Should you do it yourself or hire a professional? This is a tough question to answer. Some people have a natural artistic inclination, some don't. Some budgets don't allow for anything but doing it yourself. In that case decision is simple.

I am a big believer in having best possible first impression. You might consider hiring a professional to do default page and create a template for further pages that you will make on your own. That being said, there is also a huge feeling of satisfaction in doing job yourself from scratch.

My personal experience included learning how and doing it all myself in beginning when I could afford time, and later hiring a professional (who did a fabulous job), after my time became better spent focusing on marketing.

Another absolute necessity for serious web marketer is to publish an opt-in newsletter or ezine. This is how you stay in touch with your prospects and of course remind them to come back to your site. It could be something as elementary as alerting people to changes on your site or simple price updates. Or you could produce a full blown Electronic magaZINE. Again, you should be subscribing to other ezines for ideas and information.

Sidenote: Always seek out and obtain an authors permission before using all or part of their work. Plagiarism does not pay!

A lot of EZINES offer reader information of great value for FREE. This accomplishes two things.

1) It establishes you as an expert, or at least a source of expert information.

2) It encourages subscriber to keep reading your ezine regularly. Of course when they read information they can't help but see ads for your products or services.

Many successful ezine publishers will accept paid for ads from related non competing businesses. This can add a very nice profit center to your online business. A popular variation of this is to swap ezine ads with your competition. This will increase your exposure to other readers who may not have found your site otherwise.

"It's kind of fun to do impossible." Walt Disney

4) GET BUSY! MARKET THAT PRODUCT.

"The first requisite for success is ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary." --Thomas A. Edison

The number one priority above all else is to get traffic. You can have prettiest site, best ezine, most education, and most fantastic product on Internet, but it will gain you nothing if people don't get exposed to it. ‘Build it and they will come’ might work in movies, but on Internet you need TRAFFIC!

There are many more aspects to managing a successful Internet presence and we will discuss them in future issues. These are basics, starting point, Micro View.

You probably have figured out by now that I am a big believer in motivational quotes. I‘d like to leave you with my all time favorite.....

“DESTINY is... not a matter of chance, it is a matter of CHOICE; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing ...to be ACHIEVED” William Jennings Bryan

You'll get results by targeting your site. You can create a niche (small unique market) on Internet and still reach a large number of people. As a matter of fact, most companies that are making money on Internet focus on one simple product and specialize.

Remember, you can always introduce other products later. Your main concern right now is to get customer, right? It's much easier to design, promote, and support one item than to dissipate your time with twenty different products.

Now that you have your niche, it's time to.....

5. Promote Your Site and Reap Benefits

Okay. You've created a targeted site that appeals to your customer. Now it's time to promote. Promotion is key phase of building your business online. You've got to go out and get your customers.

The most successful proven methods of building a business on Internet are:

- search engine positioning - online targeted advertising - making your site known to your current offline customers - press releases - newsgroup postings - link trades - publishing a targeted ezine

I could give you detail about how to implement each but space in this article does not permit it.

One resource I've found very helpful in implementation of all these suggestions is a new book called Make Your Site Sell by Dr. Ken Evoy. It has everything you need to know from start to finish about creating a successful online business.

A final note. Remember, nothing works until you use it. Re-read this article, do one or two of steps at a time, and you'll start to see results from your web site.

Candice Pardue is the Webmaster and co-creator of Online Success for Internet Business - Developing cutting edge marketing techniques for emerging and established Internet businesses. Lots of free articles, tools, and resources for building Web traffic. Visit Online Success at: