The Four Fundamentals of Every Web Business
By Wayne Van Dyck
There are four components to every web business. Until you understand them, you’ll never be able to make any money online. Once you understand them, they need be put into practice, if you wish to be successful.
The four strategic components that make up every web business are:
Product
Technology
Traffic
Conversion
Every web business starts with a product. If there’s no product then there’s no reason for the business to exist. There are two kinds of products that can be sold, physical products and information products. Web businesses focus on informational products because they can be digitized and delivered over the internet…at almost no cost. In addition, information product businesses can become totally automated…”money machines”.
The there are two forms of informational products, other peoples products and your own products. Most web businesses start out selling other people’s products and earning commissions. After they’ve developed some online experience, they usually go on to develop their own info products.
Once a product (or product strategy) is selected, the second component is the technology platform that enables the business to “be online”. There’s a great deal of technology to operating a web business. In addition to the basics of a hosted web server and website (where online visitors interact with the business), there are online software tools required to manage the marketing, sales, collections, accounting and reporting. The exact requirements of the technolgy platform are directly related to the nature of the product being offered. And no business can take place until… the technology is functional.
The best product and technolgy are worthless without traffic coming to the site. More important the traffic has to have a high percentage of prospects for the product being offered. There are two kinds of “targeted” (with lots of prospects) traffic, paid and free. Paid traffic comes from banner ads and pay-per-click ads on google, and other search engines. Free traffic comes from many sources. Paid traffic is: fast, targeted and costs money. Free traffic requires lots of work and takes a long time to get.
The best product… on the best technolgy platform… with lots of traffic… is worthless without conversion. Conversion is the process of turning traffic into customers and money. Conversion is the selling process done online. Conversion (the percentage of traffic that becomes customers) is driven by such things as: the sales copy on the webpages, the use of audio and video in the selling process, the offer and any guarantees. Conversion is where the real money is made, because until there is a sale, no money changes hands.
About the author
Wayne Van Dyck is the founder and principal of Six Degrees Media in Sausalito, CA. He is also the creator and developer of Smart Money Websites, the first complete, Internet Business-In-A-Box.
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