Ever thought of expanding your business by adding on-line
revenue streams? Or creatng a new business on-line? If so,
there are many "gurus" around who'd like you to pay
them high fees for the intricacies of their expertise.
Some are very good...However you'd better know exactly what
kind of help you're going to need, or these fees will eat
into your profits long before you're even close to getting a
return on your investment.
Simply put, to build a stream of online revenue, you must
hold skills in two areas:
1. Attracting the right visitors to your website.
2. Persuading these visitors to carry out desired actions.
Let's take an example where:
- You sell a product at $100
- 1000 visitors arrive at your web site per month
- 1% of these buy your product
Using the following formula, your short-term revenue is
derived:
Product price x (# of visitors) x (% of visitors who buy)
Or, $100 x 1,000 x .01 = $1,000/month
Thus, increasing your revenue based on the given product
price are broken into the following options:
- To increase your site's traffic flow.
- To increase the percentage of visitors who buy ~ the
conversion ratio.
- To do both.
But traffic and conversion ratio are not independent
factors. The type and source of your web site visitors can,
and will hugely impact your conversion rate.
So what options do we have when it comes to getting visitors
to come to my web site? There are probably only a few key
stratgies:
1. Purchase traffic.
You can buy traffic from options such as banner ads,
off-line advertising, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC). These choices
are generally quick ways of bringing visitors your way.
However, these options can be costly, as well as
complicated. For an inexperienced PPC buyer, many common
mistakes are pointlessly carried out.
2. Build Traffic
This means optimising your web site to gain a high position
in the Search Engine Results. While this can be highly
effective, and deliver significant "free" traffic, it takes
time, experience, and ongoing management effort to acheive
and sustain an envied placing on the first page. And your
efforts can be quickly trashed by competition, or simply a
change of policy by the Search Engine. Unless you already
have the experience, in practice this means a steep learning
curve, or paying an SEO consultant to do it for you. So much
for "free" traffic!
3. Dig up traffic.
By this, I'm referring to digging up existing customer lists
of yours and directing them toward your new online offer.
This approach is excellent, especially if you already have
an accessible list of customers that are prime for the new
plan. However, what if you don't?
4. Bring in traffic through public relations.
Create opportunities to promote your offer on TV and radio
or in newspapers and magazines. Also, include your website
address on press releases, "advertorials" and articles for
people to take the next step to learn more about your topic.
If you're wise and maintain good media contacts, public
relations are effective avenues.
5. Use "OPT", Other People's Traffic.
Literally, thousands of online magazines and newsletters
have editors who are hungry for relevant, excellent content.
These sources have circulation lists with thousands of
subscribers. You should be able to find several sources
related to your topic. Should they publish your article or
your advert, along with a personal endorsement, to their
circulation list, you can anticipate a deluge of visitors.
This wave may recede soon unless you repeat the same action
to another list or submit another article for publication to
that first source.
Naturally, you can't expect to do everything at the same
time! What start-up sequence should you follow? The
following order will put you on track:
1. To conduct a quick market test, purchase traffic from a
focussed keyword-targeted source. Test the profitability of
your niche, your ad copy and your offer.
(Naturally, if your current client-base is ripe for your new
offer, conduct your test first with your existing clients.)
2. Satisfied your niche is viable? Established your
conversion rate or opt-in rate? Then you're ready to use
other people's traffic. Take your offer to your target
publishers and negotiate a good deal for both of you for
them to carry your article or ad. You should do this
regularly over a period of time, using publishers who reach
different market segments.
3. Of course your sales website should be built according to
the key Search Engine Optimisation rules. It should have a
clearly focussed theme, relevant content, growing in-bound
links, etc. Over time, as the site gains visibiity in the
major Search Engines, your traffic will grow.
4. As soon as you have something newsworthy, look for
opportunities for radio, TV, newspapers etc to carry it.
As a final point, repeat these online revenue streams as
long as profitable.