Have you ever looked at your online earnings and wished you could do better? If so, then it's time for a change. Doing same things will give same results! Here are just a few suggestions for building your online business:

~1. Give your website and/or sales letter a makeover. For example, some sites offer lots of free content, as a way to help people while building credibility. Others are much more direct: entire website consists of a single sales letter. Many argue that these 'mini-sites' are far more effective in generating sales because they don't have any distractions - visitor can focus on what you have to say. That doesn't mean you have to give up your content site ... but consider creating a mini-site to help drive sales.

As for sales letter, if copywriting isn't your strength, then hire someone to do it for you. Sure, it costs money -- but a good sales letter can pay for itself many times over.

Things don't stay same online for very long! Don't be afraid to experiment. Just remember to keep backups so that you can always revert to old version if your experiment doesn't produce results you want.

~2. Don't forget about 'real world'. There's life outside of cyberspace! Many people prefer to be contacted by postal mail. Email has become so clogged with spam that it can be very difficult to get people to read (or even SEE) your message! Ideas on how to promote your business offline are available at http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/articles/checklist3.html

~3. Evaluate your income stream. How stable is your income? Are you protected against income fluctuations? Will you be okay if one of your income streams disappears, and how long will it take to recover?

You can also 'widen' your income stream by creating additional sources of revenue. For example, someone who sells a cookbook or recipes can also offer their services as a 'menu planner': working within a set of guidelines (time, budget, cooking skills, dietary restrictions...), menu planner can create 'custom' recipes for her customers. Whatever you choose to do, find other opportunities to add to your bottom line.

1. Create a web site marketing plan - if you fail to plan then you default to a plan for failure. When designing your web site, create a plan on how to market it as well. Try to put yourself in your customers shoes when doing this. It's too easy to just view your web site from your own perspective. You need to have a clear vision for your business, goals (short and long term) you wish to achieve and strategies of how you will accomplish them.

2. Define your target market - many online marketers promote their web site aimlessly in a field which is too large i.e. they may use bulk mailing as one of their promotion strategies. Of course you may get some visitors but chances are you will not make many sales. Why? You have not narrowed your field of customers and targeted them. If you sold Cadillacs online for instance, you are not randomly going to market to every person on Net. Your target market may be previous owners of cadillacs, or people who routinely purchase luxury American cars.

Getting targeted customers to your web site, will increase sales, because they will have more interest in your product or service than marketing to a general audience.

3. Use several promotion strategies - don't just stick to one form of promotion because you never know which one will work best for you. If you use many channels i.e. search engines, email marketing, forums, writing articles etc you have a greater chance of getting more traffic to your web site.