Managing the Cost of Doing Business Online
by Ken Leonard Jr
Published on this site: July 8th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month...
Have you spent a boatload of cash on advertising for your
web site, only to end up with no sales and an empty bank account?
Managing the cost of doing business online can give you the
results you are looking for, without going broke in the process.
Throwing money at a new online promotion will not ensure
it's success. People have told me about their frustration
after spending a thousand bucks on internet and email advertising
for a new product launch and having nothing to show for it
in the end. Even more disturbing are those that set up their
first campaign with a pay per click search provider without
knowing what they are doing.
The key to getting results from your online promotions while
managing your costs is to start out small. Once your ads are
getting clicks and creating sales or leads, you can increase
the funding for those ads. The success of your online or email
promotions relies on your knowledge and skills. Increase your
skills before you increase your advertising spending.
Before your advertising will produce good results, you will
have to learn how to write and test ad copy. Running ads in
targeted email publications and on web sites without this
knowledge is a waste of your advertising dollars.
When using pay per click search providers for your advertising
like Google Adwords and Overture, you will need the skills
mentioned above as well as a good understanding of how the
pay per click service works. Not only can you easily waste
your ad budget dollars using a PPC service, but you can loose
a lot more a lot faster.
Recently I heard of an unfortunate aspiring online entrepreneur
that had set up a PPC campaign but did not monitor it properly.
He lost a lot of cash by bidding on keywords that were too
expensive for his budget and by letting these listings rack
up many clicks.
Imagine the surprise of a lifetime when your credit card
bill comes in and you see a charge from your PPC service for
thousands of dollars. And if you didn't use a lead capture
page that your ads directed prospects to, you don't even have
a targeted email list to show for it. It is awful to hear
stories like this, but it happens every day to people just
like you.
There are going to be costs that are necessary to run your
online promotion campaigns and web sites. A professional web
hosting company for your website will run you $25US a month
like this one: http://hosting.kljonline.com
A versatile autoresponder and email mailing list manager
will cost you around $20US a month for an online service or
a one time fee of $199 to have a professional system installed
on your own web site like this one:http://arp.kljonline.com
Your advertising and list building costs will be set by you
according to your budget and will only change if you change
them. Some email lead providers allow you to set up your own
payment plan that is automatically renewed each month. You
know exactly how many leads you will get and exactly how much
it will cost. You can check out such a service here:
http://leads.for-your-biz.com
Using PPC search listing providers opens the door wide open
to added risk. In Google Adwords, if you don't set a daily
spending limit, you could find yourself with a bill at the
end of the month like our poor friend I mentioned earlier.
And if you pay too much for each click on your keyword phrase,
you may not make a profit from the amount of sales you get.
That is why you should know your visitor value before you
start bidding and always have the PPC ad direct prospects
to a lead capture page before they see your web site. Set
your daily spending limit and build a targeted list from your
lead capture page. You will then be on your way to profiting
from PPC providers safely.
Manage your spending properly and you can do business online
with the least amount of risk possible. Start out small and
increase your budget as your profits grow. Learn the skills
you will need to ensure that every advertising dollar you
spend is a dollar well spent.
Be In Business For Yourself, But Not By Yourself. Get
personal help from Ken Leonard Jr. so you can make
a living from home...
http://ImagineLifeWithoutDebt.com
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