Being Part of Natural Buyer Behaviour

Most people buy on their third to fifth contact. Which means you have to get their email address first time they visit your site, and periodically send them some useful free information to get them to return to your site several times. You have to give them a valid reason for them to give you their email address - no one gives their email address without something worth it for them in exchange. You can either run a newsletter or use a system like Aweber.com's to schedule an automated series of emails from pre-written templates. Obviously, providing good and relevant free information is very important here, you just can't email pure advertising to people. The Net Profits manual covers this very well (see http://www.aboutwebmasters.com/free-tools.shtml).

Affiliate Programs - Every Site Should Have One

Affiliate programs are responsible for about 35% of sales generated by big e-commerce sites. Many sites that do not do any other form of advertising report affiliates as an even larger contributor of their total sales. Why? Because over 80% of people find new sites on web by following links from sites they already visit. Having an affiliate program gives you ability to convince other related sites to link to your site. And make sure you give them a sizeable commission, say 20%. The idea is to build an affiliate network that is highly automated and empower your affiliates with tools and information that will help them succeed. Then target a few sites with high traffic as preferred partners and work with them even closer because these large sites will be main contributor of sales. For more details on this, see Declan Dunn's Winning Affiliate Game and The Complete, Insider's Guide to Associate & Affiliate Programs (see http://www.aboutwebmasters.com/free-tools.shtml).

Solving The Abandoned Shopping Cart

Shoppers abandon their shopping carts 75% of time. They never complete purchase process. The main reason why this happens has been found to be lack of human support to answer questions they may have at time of purchase, either about products or about shopping process. One way to add live human support is by using HumanClick.com's free app.

Leveraging Existing Traffic

You might as well leverage your existing traffic to generate more revenue. Sign up with some good affiliate programs from web businesses selling products related to your audience. Then take some good text links promoting those products and place them in strategic places on your site and newsletter, within flow of your current traffic and that's it! Yahoo, Excite and many of big engines all play this game and so should you. Again, text links that work in with content are better than banners because people generally have learnt not to see banners. Another thing you can do is get a free Vstore and have an instant customized mall for your site without accompanying hassles of fulfilment and rest (see http://www.aboutwebmasters.com/free-tools.shtml).

Creating Revenue Streams

Run your web site in a businesslike manner. Remember that people are still leery about making purchases with a faceless and sometimes nameless entity. When you walk into a store you actually see a person, know how to find that person if something goes wrong, and usually see some type of reassuring information that gives comfort such as a Better Business Bureau sign. Most web sites are a study in anonymity. It's hard to find a real person's name or even a business name. Mailing addresses are kept a secret. E-mail correspondence is done by auto-responders. You look at a cold computer screen and get a chilly reception. Imagine asking someone to give you their credit card information, their home address and phone number, and other pertinent data and never telling them who you are and where you can be located if a problem arises! WOW. A bit presumptuous, don't you think? It is very important to make your site a comfortable and easy place to do business.

First, you are faceless to shopper and shopper is faceless to you! In fact, you usually don't know who came and went. To overcome this, give visitor every opportunity to contact you by e-mail or phone. One of most effective ways is to go to http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin exis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=0015H 0, get a free HumanClick chat program and install one on every page on your site where questions or problems might arise. If you are online you can answer immediately. If not, potential customer can send an e-mail message for you to answer when you do go online. This gives you online presence even when you aren't there!