COUPONS.COM: SAVINGS TO YOUR DESKTOP (http://www.coupons.com/) Coupons.com brings best deals and coupons to internet end-users, helping them save money by discounted shopping. As of late, they also started delivering coupons through RSS feeds, giving their subscribers direct access to their latest offerings.

PUBSUB.COM: TRACKING THE WORLD (http://www.pubsub.com) PubSub.com is an amazing service that allows you to track practically everything going on around world by matching your keywords with tens of thousands of online content sources, and enabling you to subscribe to your customized search results through customized RSS feeds.

RSSAUCTION.COM: TRACKING YOUR PURCHASE INTERESTS (http://rssauction.com/) If you’re a regular eBay user, you certainly want to keep track of new products available, which precisely match your interests. rssAuction.com helps users keep better track of eBay by giving them a tool to first create a comprehensive list of product requirements and then delivering search result through an RSS feed. As soon as new products matching individual interests appear, user is notified of that through his RSS aggregator, giving him ability to start bidding immediately and without having to visit eBay every day to find right products.

UPCOMING.ORG: KEEPING TRACK OF LOCAL AND SOCIAL EVENTS (http://upcoming.org/) From Upcoming.org website: “Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in events you're attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog. As Upcoming.org learns more about events you enjoy, it will suggest new events you never would have heard about.”

FEEDBEEP: THE ULTIMATE “TIME-TO-INFORMATION” TOOL (http://www.feedbeep.com/) Depending on who you are and your current life situation, many content alerts are critical for you. If you’re looking for a job, you want to know immediately when a new one matching your precise interests is available, and so on. While RSS brings this information to your desktop, that might not be fast enough. Feedbeep.com takes internet content delivery one step further, by empowering users to have their critical content updates delivered from an RSS feed directly to their mobile phones via SMS.

RSS EMPOWERS CONSUMERS

The one thing all of these RSS-based or RSS-empowered services have in common is that they empower consumers.

They empower them by getting content that matters to them delivered directly to their desktops or online content aggregators, but still giving them power to unsubscribe within moments of not being satisfied with content they are receiving.

Even more so, these services empower consumers to create social networks and easily share their information with their friends, family and associates on a large scale.

Set yourself a goal on where you want to be in 12 months after starting your online business. Without a plan, even simplest plan, your ambitions are poised to fail.

2. Not Having Your Own Web Site

Get your own domain name and web site. There are many marketers who want you to believe that you can make lots of money without having your own web site. Make a professional staement and get your own domain name and web site.

3. Too Many Activities to Manage

Pick your affiliate and mlm programs wisely. Most newcomers fail due to lack of focus. Too many programs will not increase your chances of hitting jackpot. Focus on most effective programs and stick with it. You will be rewarded in long run.

4. Spending Too Much Money Too Quickly

Spending your hard earned money on advertising can quickly turn into an addiction. Meaning that you fall for myth that more you spend on advertising more money you make. Wrong. You could spend all money in world on wrong marketing strategy and still not making a profit. This will happen to you with all pay-per-click search engines. There’s a reason why Google is skyrocketing at stock market. There are too many advertisers spending too much money on pay-per-click and are not realizing that only winner is Google themselves. The only thing that will stop this behavior is you either run out of money or your credit card is maxed out. My advice, pay-per-click is last part of a well planned marketing strategy. There are much more effective advertising vehicles available than pay-per-click.

5. Don’t SPAM

This is single most reason why startup online businesses get in trouble and actually have to close and start all over again. If you have a newsletter or some other information you want to distribute via email. Only use verified email addresses, typically double opt-in email addresses that you collected. Stay away from any brokers who want to sell you huge lists of emails for pennies. This is surefire way to get into trouble and out o business. My advice, slowly grow your email list with verified addresses only. These people actually want to hear from you and are more likely to buy from you.

Unfortunately I didn’t have this information when I started my online business and I paid for making these mistakes. Don’t do what I did, do what I’m telling you to do. Sounds familiar? Well in this case it is just a recap of my experiences and hopefully you get some use out of this.

Sincerely, Peter Dobler © 2005