Among many secrets of successful entrepreneurs, there is a very common one that many people overlook. With today’s consumers there are literally countless ideas and products that can sell. Back in the day, some guy used to find it difficult to remember what he was told to do. So, to make life a little bit easier, he’d write them down on little pieces of paper, that he then stuck on his wall. Soon enough, his simple idea was turned into the invention of what we today know to be “Post-It” notes. A simple guy pioneered a simple invention that millions of people today commonly use. It’s amazing how many ideas people have that can turn into great products. Who would have guessed at the time that the Post It notes product would have turned him into a millionaire? See, today it’s not so difficult to find a product to sell, many people have good ideas; solid products or services that they don’t give themselves credit for. There is probably a buyer for every product out there. If this is so then the one crucial element, perhaps the facet that can turn a product from nowhere to a bestseller is the art of advertising. Finding the target market and hitting the bull’s eye. You’d be surprised how many ridiculously dumb products out there can sell. These guys just know how to make something really dull look appealing; and what do you know…there goes the wallet?

In the modern advanced world we live, with modern day technology of tomorrow’s reality, you’d expect making money online to be a breeze of a job. Just pop online, get your product up on your website and have them sell like giveaway bonanza. Whoever has that mentality has indeed figured it wrong. But I hear you say, “Hang on, I’ll have good content up there and search engines will pick it up, so traffic will follow?” Whoa…let’s take a step back shall we. Firstly, search engines take their time finding new websites, unless you make the active effort to submit it. Millions of websites with plenty of content go unnoticed by search engines because of the lack of understanding this art so called SEO, thus hardly even indexed. Secondly, you need to get people to visit your site with your product or service, and we do this with the magic of advertising.

Potential customers and website visitors can be trying to find the right website from anywhere in the world. It would be an overwhelming job on your behalf to find them. You don’t go looking for them, they’ll come looking for you. This is when Search Engine Optimisation takes overriding importance. If for example you’re an estate agent and want the right visitors to your website who are looking to sell their houses, you will want to focus your website optimisation efforts on search terms such as “sell a house” or “real estate for sale”. Depending on the level of competition, it can take sometimes couple of weeks or usually months before you rank within 1^st or 2^nd page on renowned search engines, wherein you can expect close to maximum exposure online, receiving hundreds to thousands of unique visitors per day. That’s far more than what any Pay Per Click campaign can get you.

In my opinion anyone with the intention to make money online must get to grips with internet marketing, which is in fact the core essence. At first, it’s a hard, steep climb as things will appear unfamiliar, but when you observe the rewards for your marketing efforts, the confidence will boost and you’ll likely become obsessed. No matter what your website is related to, preferably a subject you’re familiar with, if you know how to bring visitors to it, the make money part is like watching your buckets fill up on a rainy day. Imagine you had 200 visitors to your website everyday. If you were promoting a product relative to your website, that pays a commission of $50, having a lousy 1% conversion rate which is the average for a typical online product, that would create 2 sales; total commission of $100. Do you know what that adds upto? Yes, $3000 per month! Now, imagine having around 2% or 3% conversion rate, you’ll have double or triple that amount.

Ok, let’s examine this, by playing with the figures. Consider promoting a product with $50 commission for each successful sale and with a 1% conversion rate. This means one in every hundred visitors buys the product.

Not bad eh, now you can understand why having a good supply of visitors to your website regularly can put fat commission checks to your accounts. This is why it is important to be able to attract visitors in order to turn your website into a profitable one. In most cases, it doesn’t really matter what your website is about because you’ll almost always find a product that will interest your website visitors. But remember, it is important to bring visitors who will be interested in your website topic. Otherwise, the majority of traffic will be diverted off your website within seconds.

1^st Tip: initially, don’t aim to sell/promote anything on your website, until of course you gain recognition and grow a general readership base. When you begin to get loads of visitors start convincing your readers that the product you have on your website will be of great use to them.

2^nd Tip: never over-advertise on your website. Whilst this may create good revenue and profits for the short-term, it will begin turning your visitors off. They’ll usually bounce off your site as soon as they see how cluttered it is. This creates a bad user-experience. Smart websites utilise every webpage effectively to gain maximum possible revenue without spoiling good user-experience. Often, most visitors will barely realise money is being made out from it.