Facebook Developers, Internet Marketers, Online Entrepreneurs get ready for some more traffic as MySpace is opening its doors to software developers allowing them to create games and media-sharing applications.

MySpace are going to formally launch their “Developer Platform” next week, but are already allowing Developers to sign up now. The tools have been developed with Google and will allow programmers to create programs similar to those used by millions on rival site Facebook.

The success of Facebook Apps has obviously got MySpace guys thinking its time to let Developers in, with nearly 15,000 applications already written for the site its got to be a positive move. Despite FaceBooks popularity it still lags behind MySpace in terms of overall users.

MySpace has around 200 million registered users, compared to 63 million who use Facebook. MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580m in 2005. Last October it announced that it would join OpenSocial, Google’s platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website. (Snippet courtesy of BBC NEWS)

The tools which should be available from 5 February 2008 will allow developers to build applications that make use of the MySpace member profile. Amit Kapur the CTO of MySpace has stated developers will also be able to make money out of their applications.

I should hope so too!

Finding a Wholesaler/Distributor is a fairly simple process although many find this part most difficult. Nine times out of ten you are going to need to call the wholesaler as many of the decent suppliers of a product you’re interested in will not accept emails etc…

With “WebKinz” I decided to use trusty Google and managed to find a distributor in 10 seconds, I then phoned them to be given my area manager. I did the following:

“product keyword” + wholesaler
“product keyword” + distributor

That?s it.

Another very good but it is the longer, harder route (this is what people hate doing) Trade Shows. These shows are a place where you can find the vendors/suppliers you need to work with.

Just search on Google again for Trade Shows that match your business idea. There will, more then likely be a yearly trade show for your product/idea within your area. Some you have to pay for and others are free, you can turn up and speak to so many suppliers/distributors you’ll be spoilt for choice.

So with that part taken care of we now need to study our Competition. First, Basic research with some product keywords (brand name to start) I am going this to be doing this manually and not using any tools/software. So, I would just go to Google and type in “webkinz” don’t make this too complicated and just aim to beat the websites that are on the first page. We want to analyze why they’re there and what we can do to compete with them and improve on our business model to beat them.

I decided to choose three sites from the first page on Google for our brand name keyword:

Actually, some are irrelevant as they are information based sites like “Wikipedia” so I missed them out and choose actual eCommerce based websites selling the product.

1. www.webkinz.com/ –
2. www.hamleys.com/icat/webkinz –
3. www.ukwebkinz.co.uk/ –

One other website which was interesting that I might talk about in detail later seemed to be run by an Affiliate Marketer, niche site builder. I could tell this because of the Amazon and Google Adsense ads splattered all over it. So armed with the sites selling our product, we now need to Analyze the Business Model of the sites I have chosen – Keyword Search, Search Engine Optimisation, Internet Marketing, Site Age etc…

How many people are searching for your product, well, lets choose the brand name to start with and although very broad you should always aim to eventually rank well organically for your main product keyword. To give me a basis to go on I’m going to use WordTracker the results for this product are outstanding just for this one keyword. Enough to give me even more reason to open a store based around this very sort after product.

I would suggest you Invest in a paid for keyword service though, this will help you identify, organise and optimise your site for at least the top ten searched for keywords used by consumers online.

(I will update this part with some of the Tools I use soon)

I’m going to Analyze the site – http://www.ukwebkinz.co.uk/ –

Quick look at the age of the domain brings up “16-may-2007″ this is great news as they have managed to rank well for their main brand name keyword within a year and in Search Engine Optimisation terms is great going. They could optimise their “Title Tag” much better as at the moment they have “UK Webkinz – Online webstore” nothing terrible with it but it could use stronger keyphrases in the title to possibly rank even better. This would also encourage more clicks/visits to their site.

A better title would be “WebKinz Stuffed Animals and WebKinz Codes at UkWebKinz.co.uk”.

Keywords are important as well and I would take some ideas from what they have on their’s. Oh, on looking they don’t seem to have any other TAGS in their code so this is not fully SEO optimised. They would benefit from an informative Description TAG and a Keyword TAG. Outlined below is how I would set-up an index homepage.

That is a solid structure to use on all your product pages. When we get to the section of using a CMS “Content Management System” we will discuss having a unique “Title Tag” for every product and changing the keywords to match the product on the page. This is very important for SEO and will improve your organic product search results.

Another important factor in your Search Engine Optimisation is incoming links as this shows popularity of the site and is one of the many things Google uses to rank your site for any given keyword(s). They have 4 backlinks to their site which could be very wrong based on using this BackLinkChecker. If it?s that?s a great sign for us.

Very simply you would now need to build up your backlinks using a paid for service or do this or by contacting other related sites within your market asking for a link back to your site.

In 2008 this doesn’t work well so now online entrepreneurs are using Directories by submitting their site to them to build up links to their website. Another way is to purchase web links, known as Text Links which a really frowned upon – with Google anyway.

Read more about whether you should still use the paid for Text Link Ads model in your marketing efforts.

In our next update we will continue with our Competition Analysis and then move onto Choosing the right eCommerce Platform that suits your business model.

One of the best business/motivation books I’ve probably read is “How to Think and Grow Rich” I mention this because it focuses around the premise of Modelling the Success of others. When I started reading it that didn’t sink in at first.

I do believe in that if you want to be successfull a good place to start at least at first, is to model the strategies of those whom are already successful.

This way, you can soak every piece of information up and use it to your advantage quicker than it might take you if you were to start from scratch. In Web copywriting the best way to become a Successful Copywriter is to select a website or sales page that you like and you know is producing sales. Simple really…well yes and no.

I’m no expert in this, but I have studied sales pages and written a few myself. I would use this technique myself mainly to help get the job done quickly as I really do hate writing. Copy your favourite sales page out (Completely) replacing it with your own words. This way you can pick up the style of how its written and on the way learn valuable writing skills. Its a Free Blue Print that has been given to you and all you do is add your own words to make it unique to you.

I do not welcome plagiarism and I am in no-way stating you do this verbatim. I am merely implying you copy a winning formula. Look for where they tell the story to the visitor and then sell the benefits while keeping them on the page ready for the end of the page when they give them the BUY now or lose forever button. This stuff works.

If you sit down and do this it will take you no more than five hours I promise, and as you do it you will immediatly start to learn how to flow your words and use the correct phrases and really get into the mind of your buying public.

Maybe I should build a product and put myself to this test as I feel my writing skills are getting better and better daily because of this blog. We’ll see…

I first started using Google Alerts when I was heavily involved in my own online eCommerce Business. Now that I’m not, I use it for ideas and to spy on competitors.

You can select from any category, key-term you want then you can set by the type which is – News, Blogs, Web, Video, Groups and comprehensive (never used the last one). You can also filter it by as-it-happens, daily or weekly.

All that happens now is, you will receive email results based on the market you’re interested in. This will save you time looking for information on your market and for bloggers it will also help with writers block for the days when you struggle to come up with an idea for a good article.

At the moment I’m finding it very useful to see what businesses are doing online and to get good ideas and general information on a wide variety of subjects.

I’ve purposely blanked out what I subscribe too (cannot give you too much information). Google email me on a daily basis and sometimes I don’t get around to reading it. At least it’s all automated and If I want, I can just open my email and there will be tons of info I could use or not as the case may be.

Basically I use it as a great spy tool as it enables me to keep a loose eye on my competitors. If they’re using Press Releases as one of their marketing tools I get to see that directly from my inbox. Perfect!

In Googles Own Words:

* monitoring a developing news story
* keeping current on a competitor or industry
* getting the latest on a celebrity or event
* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

If you’re not using it, you should try it – Google Alerts set up an account in seconds, unless you already use Gmail, Sitemaps etc (you should be by now anyway). Oh, and it’s free!

NetBusinessBlog is getting a new logo – the old was, to put it bluntly, knocked together fast from the guys who designed the site.

It was on my list of things to change and as of now it is being designed. I am getting rid of the money images, cash etc as I feel they’re very cheesy and not what I was actually looking for when I had a vision for the new site.

Online Branding is the cornerstone of your business identity. Your logo appears on your signs, business cards, adverts and lots of other promotional material. It?s critical to your business to have a professional, impressionable and memorable logo that accurately reflects and conveys the essence of your company and business.

My Web Development company recently built an eCommerce Store. The following is our normal procedure before we even start to build the structure for an eCommerce store.

We asked our client to think about a brand which would be easy to remember when thinking about their products. They ended up with 5 or so ideas before going with 5339 which identifies the cog set-up on a standard Road Bike.

We thought this was a fantastic name because it identifies key benefits which are:

1. Easy to spell (its numeric so even easier) (very important as over 50% of the UK are dyslexic)

2. Very brandable from a merchandising point of view etc?

3. Conveys a strong, fresh, easy to remember message which will help with brand recognition for years to come.

Here was the final draft for the logo, it was essential to get this right before we started the initial build of their eCommerce Store.

We were very happy with the logo which enabled us to identify the colouring and overall architecture of their eCommerce Store.

Whatever your site ideas, always think about the branding potential it has before you even start to build it. I would rather have a brand name online and low traffic rather than some less thought out site with an obscure business name that has no potential apart from the traffic it generates. You will always have more opportunities with an established branded business.

Ok, another update in the quest to build a Niche Forum that will eventually make money.

Submit2Please seem to have finally got started and it looks good as they are slowly adding OapInsure to directories (500 of them in total). I get the confirmation emails sent to me, so I can see what directories the site is going in which is great.

SubmitEdge have also completed my 500 word Article and are about to start adding that Article to 100 Article Directories. I am fairly happy with the quality of the Article and the density of the keywords used within it. It’s not 100% (because I’m quite fussy) but it is enough to bring traffic in the long run I feel. This is something I will pay for Monthly as It’s well worth the money I spent.

I’m pleased, as its all positive marketing that I could not have done without outsourcing these jobs as I am too busy running my web development company (and updating this blog) to even think about doing these important tasks.

Everything I have covered over the last updates I am getting done which is great for moral and a step closer to achieving what I set out to acheive. In the last update I mentioned contacting a design/coder to help design a new look Forum although I do like Phorum I wanted a unique look and the Phorum software was not suitable for me. So…I set out what I needed at WebMaster-Talk I was eventually contacted by a few people. I have selected one person to come on board and help me set-up the new forum software, which is going to be PunBB along with a custom design (skin).

We are in discussion now – I am looking to offer a percentage of the turnover for the first year and have him work with me to support the forum also.

One outsource job I have not paid for yet is the ForumPosting – I mentioned these guys WiredFlame – I am still weighing up options via forums although I would prefer to use people who have being offering this service for a while and will research thouroughly and give me quality posts which is imperertive.

I think I will make my mind up for sure once the new design is done. The next update will hopefully hopefully have the content to talk about and the new design. Then I can discuss more options for Marketing and getting even more traffic. I’m sure one service I will use will be ReviewMe as I will select a blog that matches the niche.

Email Marketing, is it still a useful tool? – Mass Mail Software who produce tools for online entrepreneurs obviously think it still is. Email marketing is almost as old as Email itself, still this form of marketing can be your most powerful and should not be underestimated. Just a few years ago SPAM messages were reaching more than 90% of all email!

It was feared that email marketing would have died out by now but Email marketing actually grew by 40% last year and remains almost the number one tool for marketing for most online businesses.

What makes or breaks an Email campaign is whether or not your mail is considered SPAM or not, so getting past an ISP is now harder than ever in 2008. There are two main types of email Marketing – “spamvertising” and the very similiar but sounds consumer friendly “customer relationship cummunication” If you’re not opted in to receive emails from a sender or not and if the mail in question has nothing to do with your products or your relationship as a customer this would be considered as “spamvertising”.

To be effective with email marketing you must communicate well with your customers about things they have already expressed an interest in.

If you’re thinking about adding email marketing to your strategy you will eventually need some tools to help you. Luckily the guys at Mass Mail Software have a range of products that can help you with your Email Marketing their software will help you manage your email campaigns more effectively.

Their main product the Atomic Bulk Mail Sender allows you to track, design, send and monitor bulk personalized messages with ease. Metrics is the most important (underlooked) part of running your email marketing campaigns. It would be pointless and a waste of hard work to have your campaign hit 10,000 people and not even track if the customer even got to open your email! With the Atomic Bulk Mail Sender you can do all of this and much more…

One thing I mentioned before was ISP headaches and knowing if your email was even delivered, well…the Atomic Bulk Mail Sender has its own internal SMTP server and delivers mail messages directly to email recipients without the use if the ISP mailbox. So theoretically that is taken care of…

Mass Mail Software in their own words:

As you might know, the best advertising on the Internet is electronic mail. Our tools make it easy for you to send email newsletter, and manage bulk mailing lists for contacting potential customers more effectively.

Mass Mail Software have a full range of products all based around email marketing, if you are already testing this strategy or are interested in getting into email marketing I would definately take a look at the products they have. At the moment If you order two or more of their email marketing tools you’ll receive up to 40% off.

Mass Mail Software >>>

So to recap from yesterdays Post – Revealed: ?Build Sites that Make Money? eCommerce Store – I now need to find out more about the products people are buying from the categories and keywords I selected.

First off “star wars” this is a no brainer in this category but very saturated as like DVDs its just simple, everyone loves it, so why not sell it? Not to say we couldn’t go into this market as we could easily. Keep your options open for now.

Very quickly I see something interesting after having a quick search about. I took a big liking to “WebKinz” now I have no idea what they are or how popular they are as a product, but after about three minutes I can see why they sell.

WebKinz are very collectable it seems (remember beanie babies?) I was suprised to see they’ve been around since 2005 (you can tell I don’t have kids yet) as I would have said they were a fad and fads are good for so long – this may or may not be a long term eCommerce Store but it is definately a popular product that is selling in droves right now. According to NPD Group the product brought in more than $45 million (USD) in United States retail sales in 2006. That makes me smile a bit more!

So, I can see many eBayers are selling them, up to and over 30 items a day on the US eBay! Retail price seems to be at approximately $4.99 depends on the popularity of the toy. Just as a guess I would say a realistic mark up would be between $2.50 and $6.00 which are low margins especially for eBayers (with all the fees) with your own store you’ll have less overheads but also have to take into consideration less traffic to start with. This tells me this business is going to be a low margin high turnover product. I have been involved in this type of business model before so I understand the need for good traffic before I see any decent sales.

The High margin, low turnover model is slighty easier as you would require less amounts of traffic to make possibly the same profits.

I know that if I can get hold of a wholesaler I can charge more than ebayers do, why is this? because eBayer buyers go to eBay with a certain mind set (they want a bargain) its been driven into them. That was eBays USP or maybe it was when they started, come to eBay for a bargain like a car boot sale.

Visitors to eBay are savvy enough (just) to know its not a real company they’re dealing with (there are also large reputable companies trading on eBay now) and buying a product from, it’s me and you the normal everyday Joe. It’s worth noting, that even though they will probably get a far better service from an eBay Seller, they will still expect the same product, service, gaurantee etc…but at a much cheaper price. It’s this ignorance that makes many eBay Sellers struggle to be successful on eBay.

This is because eBays business model was started from one mans idea of selling your old stuff and making some money in the process P2P. Then the Auction format was born, which suited this model. Once they introduced BUYITNOW (new goods) it started a frenzy of Retailers and savvy eBayers sellers jumping on board and buying stock in brand new to resell to this hungry, bargain hunter traffic. The one thing that never changed was the eBay Buyers mind set, and that was and still is I’M GOING TO EBAY FOR A BARGAIN!
We don’t want bargain hunters, we want serious buyers!

I’ve been involved with many eBay buyers and sold over $40k worth monthly so I do understand the eBay buyers mind set.

To Our Advantage:

So while some of your competition struggles on eBay we use it to our advantage to scope the market, see how much is selling, copy the model and build our very own store. I promise you will have a different sort of consumer who visits your store usually from one of the search engines.

Their thought process is so different, which makes it easier to sell to them and provide better customer service. Even though we are going to sell the same product (or service) to them, we will make more money and be trusted much more as an eCommerce Store Owner. Ironcially even if I was the same person who ran an eBay Store with the same product.

Ok, there is one thing we will have to pay for to start with, “Traffic” – organic listings and other forms of Marketing, SEO etc, will kick in later. Obviously eBay has this in abundance but you do pay for it. I hear eBay fees are getting higher and higher and possibly this does not reflect the traffic levels they are giving to their eBay Sellers?

Anyway, so far I have been able to indentify a sort after product, highlight its popularity and approximate its sales. I now need to find a wholesaler, understand its consumers, when they buy, what the HOT sellers are and what postage price would be considered as a fair one.

Finding a good wholesaler/distributor could be the hardest part in setting up your eCommerce business so, this should be set out as the most important task you finalise before actually building your store.

In the next installment we will look at Finding a Distributor then our Search Engine Competition, Competitors Website Analysis and how many people are searching for the product (daily/monthly) and more.

In this three of four part series (not sure yet) I am going to reveal how to build a Successful eCommerce Store. I was involved in setting up a very successful eCommerce store in 2003 to 2006 and now that store turns over more than $10 Million per year and is only four years old. (I am no longer a part of the company)

The positive thing about creating your own eCommerce store is that the oportunity to make lots of money is still very much there. In all markets most Stores are ignorant to their oportunity to make lots of money. In terms of their effectiveness, most eCommerce Stores are a complete waste of time.

Seriously, there are so many badly designed, badly structured, badly coded, badly optimised (if at all) eCommerce Stores that this means there is so much room for improvement. You could choose any MarketPlace and still go after the Leader in the competition and make a killing using the correct Procedure.

The wealth of tools available to Internet Entrepreneurs in 2008 are stagering and will make it even easier to compete and take the top spot away from the Top Dogs in any online market. You don’t even have to have much if any knowledge about your chosen market because you can get hold this easily and I am going to walk you through this later in the series.

So, where do you start, what do you sell? and who are going to be your consumers?

Ths online demographic has changed so much in the last few years that its not online geeks and single men that are opening up those fat wallets to spend online. Great news for us. Forrester Research stated back in 2006 that 50% of online shoppers are now females, this opens up pretty much any market you choose to sell too. Talk about spoilt for choice.

Where do you Start?

As mentioned before the tools availabe to us are almost laughable, I laugh because of how much information I can find out about my marketplace and my competitors I almost feel sorry for them! Just imagine trying to do this in the offline world…It would take forever to find out this type of inforamtion about your soon to be competitors. Now this isn’t the only key to becoming successful you need a few more key ingredients.

This statement is the most overlooked part of what I would say many online store owners fail to achieve – “Customers First, Money Second“. Remember that because I promise you if you get all else a little wrong at first you will beat your competition by Adhering to that Statement. It amazes me how manyt businesses mess this simple task up. Treat them like gold dust. I come from a customer service background and I used to thrive on it so I understand how important this is to any business. If you do not have nay form or customer service experience eithier go and get some by getting a job in the real offline world or seek advice from a customer service agent or employee a top class customer service representitive. It’s the single most best advice I can give you.

Similar to how I think about this blog in that it’s “Visitors First, Content, Marketing, Google, second“.

Start by choosing your market then we can use our tools to study our Market and within possible weeks or months have a store ready to compete if we want it. You have a variety of services you can use to do this or you can do it all manually. For the start of this series I will do it manually which may or may not be to acurrate be we can be almost on target enough to compete with them.

A service I have just signed up to is HitWise and in their own words this is what they can help you do –

Each day, Hitwise provides insights on how 10 million US Internet users interact with more than 1 million websites, across 165+ industries. Learn how to apply the Industry’s most timely and robust competitive insights to your online branding, search marketing, content strategies and online partnerships.

With a service like this at your disposal it makes it simplifies how to identify if you’re able to launch into a marketplace to compete and make a successful business. Back to the manual way of researching your marketplace.

Start with what you’re going to sell:

Forget for a second all you have read and heard about choosing a product to sell online – you can choose almost anything really, it does not need to be the most searched for keyword or keyphrase on Google. So go to eBay Pulse and take a look at what you can start selling.

eBay Pulse will help you identify what is selling but always remember eBay is a place for deals so many products that sell well on eBay may not sell well on your site. I have experienced this first hand. It gives us ideas to work on though so, I’m going to use the click and hit way of choosing potential ideas for You to start an eCommerce Store.

Don’t worry about what you like or dislike right now as unless you’re really are keen to sell something you like it may turn out to be un-successful anyway. It is better to go with something that you know is at least selling items daily. First category I hit on was Toys and Hobbies, again I just picked it with no thought out process, lets see what’s selling within this Niche.

First three Top Searches according to eBay are:

1. star wars
2. webkinz
3. fisher price

So lets drill down a few categories – I have chosen within Toys & Hobbies / Model RR Trains. I already like this so far as we have a number of store ideas.

First three Top Searches according to eBay are:

1. lionel
2. american flyer
3. marx

I do not have a clue what these search terms are at the moment but I need to find out if they are selling and in what quantities at what cost and what type of mark-up (margin) they have.

Looking to the left you can see the Top eBay sellers and their feedback level. This already gives me a good indication that this product sells just by the number of feedback they have. This can still be very misleading, so we need to delve deeper to get a better idea.

That’s it for now, we will recap tomorrow so see you then.

I’ve set myself a live challenge to build a site in 29 minutes and sell it. Ok, realistically I won’t sell it in 29 minutes but you could do easily do this everyday and make about $50-100 USD building and selling these little babies on eBay or even Sitepoint.

Best sites to build are in the make money niche as people who search for this keyword want to be sold too and want a cure so we are going to give them just that. Remember, we know that its very hard work to make money online in reality, but we can supply their need with a well set out “Content Managed Site” ready to make money. All they have to do is make it work, very few do…

For this to work you need the following:

- A bit of capital not much though.
- An account to buy domains (not GoDaddy please).
- A Reseller Account (would be easier but not neccessary).

Domain – $9 (NameCheap)
Hosting $5 p/m (Reseller Accounts vary as mine is $24 p/m)
Open Source Content Management System – $Free

Projected Gross Profit $40

We can be as creative as we want and with the wealth of tools at our disposal on the net it makes life easier and faster to make these sites.

I’m going to be as quick as I can here, I don’t want to spend too much time on building a make money site as I’m not making much per sale. (you will need a host with the famous Fantastico installed) I’m going with CubeCart (eCommerce Off-Shelf Solution) remember though, you could use another system to build your make money site. I’m going to try and sell this with a few ready made products from ClickBank loaded in it – the new owners goal would be to purchase this site and then promote it to make some sales.

OneClick install via Fantastico makes it a sinch to install and then having my Reseller Account handy makes it simple to sort the DNS for my domain and give the domain some hosting space (50MB for now) this also gives me the oportunity for an upsell later when I offer the buyer some hosting space with their purchase.

With all that sorted, I’m ready to put some products in and tweak the site a little. Quickly design a decent logo in Photoshop and add that then head to the CubeCart admin to upload some images of the make money products.

Head over to ClickBank and choose a few products in the make online money niche. Copy some text from the crap they write on their sales pages and also a product image as this might come in handy later. You need to be creative on how you offer the products but you can see what I have done on the eCommerce Platform.

That’s it – I could now head to eBay and put it up for sale or head to some make money forums and offer it up for grabs.

Fairly simple Make Quick Money idea. It does need some more I know, but it gives you some ideas on how quick and easy this can be done.

Here’s the finished site – FoogleSnatch again, still some work to do on it but you get the idea.

Have a Good Weekend…