The 3 must-have ingredients of an internet business

Every day, thousands of people decide to venture into the adventurous world of internet marketing. Just like newbies in any endeavor, many people get started without a clue of where to begin. Every internet business, whether you're selling digital information products, or physical products that you will deliver to your customers, must be built around 3 key ingredients, if it is going to be viable in the long run.

Lead capture page: You spend days, maybe even weeks or months attracting visitors to your website through a variety of methods. You might use pay-per-click marketing, or blogging or social media, or videos. Regardless of the method you choose, one of the strategies you must incorporate is to drive traffic to a lead capture page.

The purpose of the lead capture page is to capture your visitors' information, usually in the form of their names, email, and phone numbers. The information you decide to capture largely depends on the methods of marketing you plan to incorporate in the future. Depending on your followup marketing, you might decide to capture their physical address as well.

The most effective lead capture pages usually offer the visitor something of value in exchange for their contact information. This free giveaway may be an audio recording, video, or e-book available for instant download. It is important to understand who your audience is and what the conversation is inside their head.

Autoresponder service: Once your email capture page is set up, it is important that it is set up to work with an autoresponder service, so that you can stay in contact with your leads. Once you have generated a lead, it is your job to get them to know you, like you and trust you, if you expect them to buy from you. You do this by sending them information that helps them or entertains them.

Don't always try to sell to them. Spend some time sharing information that is of value to them without want. A good rule of thumb is that you should share freely 90% of the time and sell 10% of the time. Another method is to teach them how to solve their problems, and do so in a way that they have to buy your product or a product that you promote in order to implement the solution you just taught them.

Something to sell, and a way to take payments: Once you have begun getting traffic and capturing leads, you have to be positioned to actually sell something. There are two main routes that people go about selling online. They either develop their own product that caters to the needs of their target audience, or they promote an affiliate product that caters to the needs of their audience. 

There are pros and cons to each. Either way will get you earning online, but developing your own product gets you more profit,. While you will make more and keep it all by developing your own product, promoting affiliate offers will get you earning more quickly and without the research and development required to develop your own product. A merchant account is what you should have in the long run, especially if you're going to develop and sell your own product, but for most affiliate programs a PayPal account is sufficient to start taking payments.

Regardless of your method of generating traffic, your internet marketing business must have a capture page, an email autoresponder, something to sell as well as a method of receiving payments. When you have those, you are well on your way to earning money online.

Author: Nate Jackson

Source: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-3-must-have-ingredients-of-an-internet-business?