Fundamental of Internet Business

I mention the term Internet Business but this these principles apply to just about any type of business that you can think.

Here is the basic sequence.

1. Determine an in demand market

2. Develop a strategy to reach the market

3. Develop or source a product

4. Promote and deliver the product

5. Relationship and Support.

To get some more details on these to ensure comprehension, here goes.

Determine an in demand market - This is a critical first step to get your business off the ground. You will have personal interest and desires but you need to find out what will sell, otherwise you have your site or store and no one shows up. In the online world, you can use places such as http://pulse.ebay.com, Google trends and several others to see whats hot in the market place. Once you get that, then you brainstorm basic keywords around the specific market or niche. You can use tools such as wordtracker.com to see what the demand is like for specific keywords.

Develop a strategy to Reach the Market - There are several ways to reach your potential customers - typically, if you are online, you would need a website (duh!) but you would need to decide if its a blog or static site with basic content. Then would decide how you plan to promote either paid or free.

Develop or Source Product - This decision could be dependent on the market. For example if you wanted to sell televisions, you could consider doing affiliate marketing or drop shipping with arrangement from a supplier. In the case of information products, you could do the same but you want to have your own product to control how you address the buyers need directly.

Promote and Deliver your Product

This is the case where you complete your website, put content that explains the product and whatever resources to help the buyer. You would then add your product link or product ordering to that website. Once thats in place, you then either use paid services such as PPC to promote or Search Engine optimization and other techniques.

Relationship and Support - Typically, if you had a normal store, you develop relationship with customers coming and out of the store over time. The same rule apply to the Internet in a more fundamental way. Customers will come to your site and not buy, so the one thing I did not mentioned earlier, you could offer something useful and free in exchange for their e-mail address. With the e-mail, you can provide them good value information and make them offer from time to time. Treat them like friends and really be helpful.

In the end Internet Marketing is not that hard. The main challenge I think is to find the correct market and then position products to address needs.