Real Stories

How to Create a Profitable Website

Posted on: Nov 24, 2009

Posted by: MyCapital.com
Member since: Feb 9, 2008

MyCapital.com Los Angeles, CA
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The Story

Having an auto-pilot website that pumps in money even when you are sleeping is many Internet entrepreneurs' dream. However, many people create a website only to see their bank account is still empty. How can you create a website and make money from it? Below are some tips that can help you create a profitable website:

1. Branding Does Matter

Many websites are very useful. However, people will not be willing to pay for your products or services unless they perceive a value for it.

Your visitors are willing to exchange their hard-earned money only for something that they ‘perceived' as having greater value than the money they gave you. How did you achieve that? With branding.

Branding creates perception. Perception is combination of a lot of things - logo, color, layout, copywriting, and how you take customer from this page to another page. Eventually, your products quality and customer service also shape how customers perceive your business brand. Imagine your website as a retail store. How do you feel when you walk into the door? Do you feel refreshed? Do you feel the products are refined and you really want to buy it even you don't need it? How do you feel after you buy that product, would you like to buy again?

2. Put Up a Team

Many entrepreneurs have the urge to do-it-yourself. The key to success is to hire right people to work for you. Everybody has his strength and weakness. If you hire a programmer to develop your website, you will have a website that is functioning well but not attractive. On the other hand, if you hire a graphic designer to develop your website, you might end up with a site that has pretty graphics but is not working. Hire people who have different talents and put them together to finish a website will also make your website to appear run by a credible company, not a one-person shop.

3. Building Trust

Partner yourself with credible companies. Wherever appropriate, put those partnership logos on your website. For example, if you have installed a secure layer on your website such as Verisign SSL, then display that on your website to inform your visitors that their information is protected. Anything that can add credibility to your website will bring you more customers. In addition to a SSL logo, BBB online and McAfee security seal is also something you may want to consider to have.

4. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

Plan your website with SEO in mind from the beginning. Learn all aspects of online marketing and apply every of it to your website. SEO is well worthy of your time because when people search for a term, they already have intentions to buy that product, or at least have the need for it. Once you attract visitors to your website with your search key term, by all means try to get an email from visitors, and send them follow-up emails with your email marketing campaign. Your follow-up email can be free article on information they might be interested, or a trial for the products that you are selling.

Instead of implement all kinds of online and offline marketing, focus your marketing dollars and efforts on one or two marketing tactics that you feel can achieve best results. It can be PPC ads, it can be social media networking, or it can be a yellow-page ad. Try to figure out which marketing campaign work best for you and maximize your investment returns from it.

And again, a well-branded website is seen by visitors again and again, so it is really worthy of your investment dollars. Your website is your marketing weapon. Make sure you sharpen it.

Advice for Others

It takes time to plan, prioritize, and implement each of the strategies above. But I believe eventually you can have a profitable website if you follow all of above suggestions. See you at the top!