ProfitableInternetHomeBusiness.com

You finally realize that you need a good opt-in list. After reading countless articles and seeking expert advice and having read many success stories of people creating a small fortune with opt-in lists you finally decide to have one of your own. Then it happens, you think you know everything there is to know about opt-in lists and have followed the advice to a tee and you still weren’t able to make a profit.

In fact, you may be losing money. Stop hiring copywriters and spending money on list building software. If people don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. You’ll realize this after a few months when you see your statistics and sales figures.

So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dived straight in. You chose a topic you think could be quite popular and would earn you money. This just not the case. Just because you wrote people from the list doesn’t mean they are going to buy instantly.

Here I will offer more advice, for those who have started an opt-in list and have failed, you can rejuvenate your failed venture. For those who are starting, here are three quick and easy ways to build a profitable opt-in list.

1) Get your customers to trust you and your products first. Just launching your opt-in list would not make you an expert and a believable seller. First publish a few articles to establish yourself as an expert, then you can start with your list. Write about the topic you know and have started and used for your site. Try to join forums first to gain knowledge about your customers about their wants and needs and target those wants and needs. If you topic is web design for example, join a forum about web design and see what people are talking about.  Also look at what problems they have – their problems = your success.

Join forums from other sites as well. Provide expert advice and recommendations. When you feel that people trust you, you will be able to start your own opt-in list. You can build a base as well with other forum users. You can ask them to join your list. Friends are always good customers. Put up a link to your site so that they may be able to see what your business is all about.

The certain truth is, the money will only come in when the consumers and subscribers believe and trust in you. They want a product or service that could be a good exchange for their money. People are not going to buy something out of your recommendation if they don’t know you.

2) Find a product or service that people want and need. Although it may not be your forte, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about well, you can carry it on forward. Invest your time, effort and money that you could sell as well as the buyers or subscribers of your opt-in list can use.

While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have interest in, there are not many people who have the same interest as you if you decide to sell something that is not entirely popular or profitable. Do your research well and you would see the profits come in. Also provide your subscribers with promotional material that they could actually use and spread around.

3) Make friends with other opt-in list users. This is basically beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you on the internet to use, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust.

Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you which ones.

Building a profitable opt-in list doesn’t just happen overnight. There is a lot of preparation involved. Opt-in lists are built from scratch, as your list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.

Rian Schoeman

SilverFox Web Design

When you think of designing images on your computer you normally think of Photoshop. When you think about publishing any kind of document you think of Microsoft word. Professional designers and desktop publishers rely on Adobe’s tools to make their industry fundamentally work, the Adobe software is the life line of putting together a piece of work and there is really nothing else that rivals it on the market at the moment. Recently, Adobe have just released the upgrade to Creative Suite 4 and it is worth every penny for the design professional.Whether you are a design agency or an individual with a professional interest you can make this program work for you!

Normally, you can only buy these program’s in a bulk package which obviously makes it rather expensive, however Adobe have now made each individual program available so anyone can buy it at a bit more of an affordable price. It is available for both Mac and PC and consists of various programs including, Photoshop CS4, In Design CS4, Illustrator CS4, Flash CS4, Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4 and Acrobat CS4. I have used the far superior Mac version of this suite and it is incredible. The flow and ease of use is astounding. The full package will cost you about $2,200 or up to $1,800 for the upgrade from CS3. That is a pretty scary amount for a part time designer at home but for a graphic design business it is not that bad at all if you consider the return on investment.

So, what is new about this design suite? Well, compared to previous versions of the creative suite it offers far more fluidity between projects. For example, if you had flash and Dreamweaver open at the same time you can easily swap between projects with no hassle which is a big advantage in the design world. The workflow is far simpler and allows designers to apply themselves to different media interfaces at a touch of a button.For example, if you were a professional working in an advertising agency you could switch between In Design and Flash projects seemlessly which would help cut down wasted time.

What makes you click the back button immediately? For me, it is cheesy music with no “off” button.

Signs of Webmaster Newbies

All of us have been “newbies” at one point in our webmastering lives.We spent hours at dhtml, javscript and graphics sites looking for copy-and-paste stuff that we thought would make our sites look impressive.

First timer’s websites are easily spotted with their smorgasboard of javascripts, animated gifs, sounds and other components. Unfortunately, this makes a site look amateur.

Creating an Amateur Image

You might have a brick and mortar business that’s been around for the last decade, with tons of satisfied customers.On the Internet, however, you are somewhat anonymous.A professional online image will inspire trust.  When designing your website, here are some things to avoid so that your business does not look amateur or like a fly-by-night operation:

• Dark, heavy backgrounds with hard-to-read fonts – For a business website, it’s best to use a plain white background and black text so that your visitors can read it easily. Some first timers are tempted to have “artistic” backgrounds with different colored text fonts. Not only does it make your text hard to read, but if you are including pictures of products, it is hard to make them blend in with the background.
• Pages that are larger than the browser screen – There’s nothing more irritating that trying to read a web page that scrolls across the screen. Most web usters have their desktop resolutions set at 1024 x 768. Try to stay within those confines.
• Sound effects – Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music, but even if you discovered music that appeals to every single person alive, don’t make it automatically load on your site. Wtih a music site, there are scripts that you can use that will give your visitor the option to click play. This goes with audio advertisements or other background sound effects — provide a way to pause the sound or shut it off.
• “Cool” effects – About 8 or 9 years ago, it was real “cool” to have a flash presentation on the index page. Most everyone was doing this. This does nothing to establish your online reputation. Flash introductions require a lot of effort to create and when they are done, do not offer anything substantive for the viewer. These introductions can take a long time to load and generally, people will not view them. Page fading effects, animated images and scrolling text are things that beginners seem to think are cool. When I first started out, I was guilty of adding these things because I thought it made me look like I knew what I was doing. However, the harsh reality is that these effects are a turnoff. I have seen some sites designed by alleged website design specialists, where the links quickly scroll across the screen and you have to “aim and shoot” just to be able to click a link. Don’t bother adding these effects. People are visiting your site for information or products, not a bunch of movement that’ll give them a headache.
• No clear navigation scheme – Many people enter a website by the interior pages, not at the home page. You need to give them a way to easily navigate through your site. Left and top menus are the most popular and are therefore familiar to your visitors. The key is that no matter where you place your menu, make sure that it is consistent throughout your site. A surefire indicator of an amateur web design is the absense of a navigation menu.
• No search feature – Particularly if you have a large product line that you are selling or if you have a content rich site, always include a search box to help your visitors. Google’s fre search box is a tool that you can use if you don’t know how to include a search feature.This makes your site “user friendly” and demonstrates that you care about your visit’rs experience.
• “Secret” prices - If you’re selling products, include the price. Don’t try to force your visitor to go through the shopping cart process to find out what the cost will be — many of them won’t do it, anyway.
• Policies – An amateur site will not include privacy policies, terms of use and, when selling products or services, returns and shipping policies. It’s a good idea to provide contact information, particularly if you are selling products or services.
• Under construction pages – “Under construction” or “coming soon” pages are a surefire way to announce that you’re an amateur. Do not bother linking to pages under construction. Add a link to your menu and sitemap once the page is completed and uploaded.
• No online shopping cart – If you are selling a product, provide a way for people to purchase your product online. When people are looking to buy something online, they usually intend to buy it immediately. Chances are, they do not want to fax in their credit card to you or mail a check or money order. If you don’t have a merchant account, consider Paypal or, in the case of digital products, consider using a service such as Clickbank.  There are other quality shopping carts available for people who already have a merchant account, such as Mals-e.com, which also provides an affiliate program option.

What’s Your Gripe?

Newbie or pro, you can voice your opinion about what makes a stinking website at the NotGuru’s survey about poor website design.If you’re looking for giveaways, software and tips to help your fledgling online business, the Not Guru blog delivers plenty of resources every day.  Take the site design survey today and feel free to submit your comments – the results are quite interesting.

These days, when setting up a business,  it is almost financial suicide not to have a web site developed. In fact there are many businesses which exist solely on the Internet. Many people are tempted to start an online business but are put off by the expense of having a web site built by a professional web site designer. This may have caused you to reconsider starting up your own business but read on as this article examines various aspects of web design focusing on creating your very first site for free or minimal cost using free tools and templates.

One of the main reasons why professional web design is so expensive is that a professional web site really is expensive to create. Not only do you have to cover the wages of the highly trained designer but the company has other costs such as office expenses. Even if the web designer works from home he will be using software and hardware, such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, graphics tablets and the likes, that is really rather expensive. However there are many cheaper, and some free, alternatives which can be used to create even the most complex websites and some companies even give away complete web designs for free (usually advertised as free web templates).

Finding the cheap or free alternatives is as simple as a search on your favorite search engine. Simply search for “web design freeware” or “web design shareware”, the difference between the two types is that one is free whereas the other requests a small payment for use (especially if the software is being used commercially). You will find a massive selection of web building tools are available and many are so good that some professionals use them!

Now upon downloading your first web design software you will see that many have WYSIWYG interfaces with drawing tools making it possible to simply draw your web site. However you will need to learn a little about the programming languages used in web design, HTML & CSS. Even basic knowledge of HTML and CSS will help greatly.

If building a web site from scratch using HTML and CSS is a little daunting then you can search the Internet for free web site templates or free css templates. You will be amazed at the quality of some of these designs which can be easily tweaked to perfectly match your web design requirements.

If even this method is a little too complicated for you there is another alternative which is one of the most popular ways in which to build a web site – blogs. A blog (weblog) can be on any subject at all and is incredibly easy to create, so easy that there are literally millions of them on the Internet.

The really great thing about blogs is that they are free, yes, get that, this amazing web building tool is offered for free! Of course some blogs carry a cost but the most common are free for a basic account, such as Blogger and Wordpress. You are given a small amount of web space to store your posts (pages) and images and the whole process of building a blog is so easy that children do it. The interface is rather like a word processor, you simply type in the text for the page and hit publish and the page is immediately created.

Of course the free blogs are rather basic with some limitations but as your knowledge increases you can upgrade some to include extra facilities and more web space. However it is really not that complicated to change the design of your blog and, if you have downloaded the blog software (Wordpress is best) to install on your own free web space (very easy to install) then you can take advantage of the many free Wordpress themes and templates available.

Remember building your first web site can be as easy as searching for freeware, shareware, free web templates etc. So why don't you head on over to your favorite search engine and get started on your very first web site just now? Take a Look at www.freewebsitetemplates4u.com