Internet Marketing Services - Sample Pages... Chapter. 2  What Type of Website to Start From the book Best Website: Simple Steps to Successful Websites.   I want to first mention the structure of a successful website.  I’ll define a successful website as - the website that makes the most money, takes the least amount of time to run, and provides the most flexibility.  The most successful website structure I have encountered is managed by a single owner who hires out some of the duties of their website business like graphic design and database design, and then manages the internet marketing campaign and any website updates themselves. There are certainly many ways to build a successful website. For instance, if you have the internet marketing knowledge, and someone else has the website design knowledge, you can partner to build a great website.  Of course this means you lose some control, and you have to split your profits.  I show in chapters 3 & 8 how to get all the work done you need by either doing it yourself or hiring it out. Deciding what “type” of product to sell is pretty simple.  You'll have the best opportunity of making the most money with a product that you own the rights to - whether it is a physical product, information product, or service. If you have a product that can be completely delivered online, preferably without your involvement, this is probably your best bet at making a consistent and significant profit online. I'd like to use BuySellWebsite.com as a great example of a service product.  Among other things, BuySellWebsite.com sold classified ad listings to people wanting to sell their website businesses.  The classified listings we sold were $99 and cost essentially nothing to provide.  Whether we sold one or one thousand, it still cost the same small amount of time and money.  Note:  I sold BuySellWebste.com in 2006. Tip: In Chapter 8 I show you how I built the classified ad database from scratch with no programming knowledge. The classified ad listing is a great example of a product that can be delivered online.  If you have a product or service that is delivered online without your involvement, your profit margin will be much greater than a traditional product.  You'll see later on that you'll probably need this extra profit margin and any extra time to survive the startup process and pay for your marketing campaign. By choosing a product that is delivered online, you are starting out on the right foot.  I don't want to make it sound like you cannot succeed with a traditional physical product.  I'm just saying that, in general, on online product is probably the most effective and profitable option. A few more examples of products delivered online would be an e-book or a membership site where users pay a monthly fee to access information.  Another example is Website Appraisals.  This is a service that we sold on BuySellWebsite.com and the Appraisals were then delivered through e-mail in an Adobe PDF document. Let's look further into the BuySellWebsite.com classified ad as an example of a service delivered online without the owner's involvement. When a person wanted to place a classified ad, they clicked on a payment button to start the process.  We used PayPal as our merchant account provider (more on Paypal later).  Once payment was made through Paypal, they were redirected back to our site, where they could fill out the ad listing form that is then automatically uploaded to the site and rotated into the active listings through the database I created. The database also allowed users to retrieve lost passwords, delete old ads, update their listings and track how many times each ad was viewed.  A database can be your best friend and hardest working employee.  It might sound like a complicated process to set up, and it can be, but, I built it entirely myself using my web design software's Database Wizards.  (I use Microsoft Expression Web, more on web design software in Chapter 3.) What does this mean?  It means I built the entire database by going through a ‘wizard’ that asks me questions about how I want my database to operate, then Expression Web writes the database code for me! This is an incredibly powerful tool and I show in chapter 8 exactly how to use it.  By learning the Database Wizard you can eliminate having to pay for a database designer.  Virtually all people who work with Web developers find the process very expensive and incredibly difficult to get what they want.  Most people fail to make it beyond trying to design their site, because it becomes too difficult to continually explain what they want and then they run out of money.  The more you are in control of your website, the better you'll be. Along the lines of effortless income, there is one revenue stream I did want to mention as something to be leery of. While it can be beneficial to advertise affiliate programs as part of your website, I wouldn’t recommend building your business around it.  If you base your business off promoting someone else's product, you are at the mercy of changing payouts, percentages, cut off levels, minimums and any other changes that may unexpectedly come up.  Not to mention the fact that the commissions are almost always too low to ever turn a profit, let alone a consistent one you can live off of.  It's OK to advertise affiliate programs as part of your website, just don't build your business around it. I’ve written this book from the standpoint of describing what I’ve found to be successful, with notes as to why it was successful.  I will also list the things that other website owners have found to be successful.  After you read the steps I describe to building a successful website, you'll be able to apply it to your situation. The point of this book is to help you get your internet business past the start up phase - in other words, to bring the business to a point of breaking even.  And then move on to creating $10,000 a month and more in profit.  So few people make it past the breakeven point, and I want to make sure we get you past this; I apologize if I bore some of the more advanced Netpreneurs, but hopefully you will consider it good review and will learn a few things along the way too. In almost any sport, the players and coaches on a team that have won in the past, know how to win in the future.  It is a huge advantage to “know” what it takes to win.  You know what things to focus on, what things to ignore and how to pace yourself.  The same holds true for business success.  I have been through the complete process of building an internet company from scratch into something very successful many times over.  I have also had the opportunity to review hundreds of others who have done it by performing Website Appraisals for some of the internet’s most successful websites.  If you haven’t yet built a successful website or are stuck with a website that is only marginally profitable and don’t know how to turn it into a very successful business, I hope you’ll take this unique opportunity to learn from my experience.  When I was starting out I had no spare money and limited knowledge about building websites and internet marketing.  I really had no idea it was going to be as incredibly difficult, time consuming and expensive as it turned out to be.  But the good news is, from all that I have learned, I intend to show you some tremendous shortcuts and amazing tips and tricks to building your own highly successful website in a fraction of the time, effort and expense! Note:  One of the most difficult things to describe is how to know when to move on from a particular task.  For instance, when is your website good enough to start working on internet marketing?  Or the reverse, when do you have enough traffic and need to come back to and improve your websites sales process and conversion rate?   Whether it is dealing with web design, database design or internet marketing, the key is to not try and make things 100% right.  This might sound like bad advice at first.  But because there are so many things the owner of a successful website must do well to consistently make money online, those making the most money online know when to move on from a particular task. .  I explain the specifics of this advice throughout the book. << CH 1.            Click Here For Chapter 3. >>   -- You're welcome to use this Article on your website, please cite BestWebsite.com as the source and that's it! --   Save This Page    Sign up for the Best Websitetm Newsletter and gain FREE access to the Bonus section! 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