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Like many other E-Biz owners, you may not feel inclined to structure your online business as a legal entity. Maybe you argue that your business is too small or that you only sell on eBay. Or perhaps you feel the process is too expensive. But the real question isn’t the size of your business, or how much it’s worth. The real question is, how much can you afford to lose?

Personal Asset Protection

When you’re operating as a sole proprietor, the law views you and your business as inextricably linked. Explains attorney Patrick O’Neill, CEO of http://IncorporateABusiness.com, “One of the biggest benefits of incorporating or forming an LLC is that your business becomes, in a legal sense, a completely separate entity from you and any other shareholders.” So in the unfortunate event that your business is sued, a judgment against your business doesn’t extend to your assets, other than those invested in the business. Similarly, your business’ creditors can only come after company assets – your house, life savings, and stamp collection remain safely out of reach.

Image Enhancement

Besides putting a virtual firewall around your personal property, you’re also strengthening your business’ image. This is especially important, because as a small E-Biz owner, you’re already at a disadvantage:

• First, as a small, unknown business, you have to work hard to create credibility with your customers. Unlike a well-known chain store, you must convince shoppers that you can consistently provide top-quality products and first-rate customer service.

• Second, when you sell online, you lack a physical storefront where shoppers can walk around and get a sense of the kind of operation you run, and whether they feel comfortable purchasing from you.

Seeing XYZ Business, Inc. goes a lot further towards reassuring potential buyers that you’ve been verified, than a generic XYZ Business. The same is true for other organizations with which you do business. Wholesale suppliers and loan officers, for example, are more likely to take you seriously. Even the IRS is less apt to audit a home business that’s an established formal entity – they believe the odds are much higher that the owner isn’t just looking for illegitimate tax deductions.

Tax Flexibility

LLCs and S-corporations were both developed with small businesses in mind, and both eliminate the double taxation of a traditional corporation. A C-corp is taxed on its earning as if it were an actual person. Post-tax profits pass through to shareholders, who must include them in their reported taxable income. For Coca-cola, this might be bearable; but for a small eBay business, double taxation can be a crushing burden. An LLC or an S-corp, on the other hand, allow you to be taxed as a partnership, so you’re not paying taxes at entity-level. You’re only required to fill out an information return for your business, and the profits and deductions pass through proportionally to the shareholders.

• An LLC is much easier to form than a corporation, and the compliance formalities are less stringent. The operating agreement can be as flexible as you choose to make it.

• An S-corp is basically a small business corporation, or a corporation that’s taxed as a partnership. It is generally less adaptable than an LLC in income distribution and imposes greater ownership restrictions.

For the entrepreneur, forming a legal entity presents a tremendous value proposition. “You’re taking preventative measures in protecting yourself and proactive measures in creating greater credibility,” advises O’Neill. “So you’re helping yourself on the front and back ends.”

There are basically 3 services which are of utmost importance to run a profitable internet home business. let us see which are these.

The first service you will need and cannot have a website without, is a domain name. A domain name is the name given that is used to find your website, for eg: http://www.yourdomainname.com. YOu need a domain name because your business needs recognition and traffic. Instead of promoting other people’s sites its best to promote your own. So you realise the value of a domain name? Now there are several free service providers but it is not recomended. If the free service provider runs out of business and closes down for some reason then all your hard work and your business is going to crashlandand and it can definitely happen. when you are choosing your domain name let it be related to your business and easy to remember. The next step is to choose an extension. There are several extension available but .com is the best one to choose.There are several domain registration service providers. choose a good one, do some background check and then decide.185

The next is a webhosting service. I would like to repeat the same thing here, never go for a free service. You will need to do your profitable internet home business in a professional and credible way. With free service providers, there will be advertisements in your site and some may not be of your business interest. Secondly when you want to expand your business, which will come soon enough, and need extra space, you will need to go for paid service since your free service provider will not provide extra space and at that time you loose your old customers and traffic. Hence a good webhosting service is very important. Let us see what webhosting really means. Your website files and all related information and data are stored in your web host server/computers. This is required because your website should be available 24/7 and should be able to accomodate any amount of traffic.150

When choosing your webhosting sevice you will need to look for a few important features you need to run the website like:

1. CGI – BIN, this is required for interactivity of your website.

2. PHP4,

3. uptime, this is the amout of time your site is available for visitors, this should be 24/7 or close

4. excellent cutomer support,

5. setup fees, none

6. space, more the better

7. traffic capacity/ bandwidth, more the better

8. pop email accounts, never less than 10 but unimited is the best

9. site stats, needed to keep track of yor site

10. FTP, atleast one account.

The third most important service is autoresponders. what is an autoresponder? an autoresponder follows up with your website visitors to provide useful information, build trust and ultimetely make some sales. Why does one need an autoresponder? here’s why. Majority of the people who visit your website will not buy from you on their first visit. infact, most people do not buy a product on the internet until they have seen it or heard about it atleast 7 time. If you are promoting a product on the internet and you don’t have an effective way to capture and follow-up with your website visitors to remind them about the products and services you are promoting, you will lose a lot of sales.

let us summerise, the 3 most important services to run a profitable internet home business are:

a) domain name service

b) webhosting service and

c) autoresponder service.

Most business owners do not explore new marketing strategies until they experience a sharp decline in their revenue. Avertising campaigns are not evergreen. They evolve and grow, improve and degenerate. Most work at home, or small business owners shell out a substantial amount of money for a good ad campaign and then let it run dry.

The first strategy for success is found in the way you view the advertising campaign’s purpose. A good advertising campaign needs to do three things. First, it needs to collect data on the market. Who is buying. What is hot, and what is not.

Second, it needs to collect vital information about the people who make a purchase from your website. This can be compiled into a profile that helps you determine how to best reach your target market. It is a market research tool that helps determine what types of advertising works, at what times of the year.

Third, it should ‘brand’ your name and logo. A successful advertising campaign will imprint the company name and logo onto people’s subconscious. This increase their ‘decision to buy’ response when they visit the website

For example, online shopping increases dramatically just before Christmas, but only if the payment gateway is fast and easy to use. However, if the user must leave the website to use the payment gateway, like paypal.com uses, then the statistics do not change. However, the payment gateway does not effect sales in the summer.

You’ll notice that no aspect of an advertising campaign is to sell the product – that is your website’s job. A successful marketing campaign manager never measure’s an advertising campaign’s success based on sales.

Large corporations will tell you that a successful advertising campaign may run for months before the results appear on the income statement.

The advertising campaign should be reviewed often, and compared to new methods, in the hunt for new ‘hot markets.’ However, hot markets burn out very quickly. The whirlwind of change that continuously sweeps through the marketplace is a powerful balancer. It gives small businesses an edge over the elephants that move slow and react to change in months, not weeks.

This is true, but there needs to be balance. Always keep 80% of the marketing budget in the tried and true marketing methods – even if they do not offer the big rewards. The other 20% of the marketing budget is free for exploration of new advertising mediums. Don’t discount anything. Look at the fortunes made when youtube.com and myspace.com skyrocketed to fame. For a few months, advertisers were raking in millions.

It is also important to keep a finger on the pulse of the population. There is a time to brand your company, and a time to break away from the pack and create a new image for yourself like Calvin Cline did with their underwear commercials.

The important thing to remember is to focus. Calvin Cline didn’t try to sell underwear to all age groups, they focused on a narrow niche. Work at home and small business owners need to learn this lesson – niche marketing is the secret to making millions.

The potential is expansive. Clever competition and new technology should be seen as marketing tools, not threats. Staying on the cutting edge is all about innovation and creativity. Money is no longer the #1 element to success. Many small businesses are becoming international on small budgets.

In this day and age, internet marketing is emerging as one of the most viable and cost-effective marketing methodologies especially for small businesses. Here are three easy steps that you can follow for an effective e-marketing plan.

The process of using digital technology in order to sell goods or service is called e-marketing. With the growth of technology and the internet, it has become imperative for businesses to use e-marketing strategies to supplement their traditional marketing methods so as to generate more product sales and to reach a wider market.

E-businesses, though, would generally focus their attention on e-marketing alone. E-marketing uses the same basic concepts as that of traditional marketing. The purpose is to devise strategies in order to deliver your message across to your target market.

The difference with e-marketing lies in the options available to you when marketing and advertising your products, services or business. Of course, you could always use the traditional method, but it is wiser to take advantage of the marketing opportunities that the internet gives.

E-marketing produces tremendous results in terms of increased market share, high margins of profit and continued customer patronage. It is also ideal for small and medium-sized businesses for e-marketing is more affordable and less effort-intensive.

Nevertheless, in order to launch an effective e-marketing campaign, you would first have to create an e-marketing plan. The focus of an e-marketing plan is to ensure high response from prospective customers. Below is a summary of steps for creating an effective e-marketing plan.

Step 1: Determine your target market

Before anything else, you must identify your market. Rank and profile them accordingly and assign resources to each target group. Know their expectations, requirements, needs and wants so that you would have an idea how to go about with your sales pitch. This would also help you in determining your costs and ascertaining your expected benefits. It is also important that you study the market environment and your competitors’ marketing strategies, and give due notice to all possible opportunities.

Step 2: Set e-marketing plan objectives and e-marketing methods

You must immediately set your objectives for your marketing campaign. Are you aiming to increase product or business awareness? Are you aiming for higher website traffic? Would you like to rank high in search engine results? Your objectives may include establishing and raising your e-presence, disseminating business information and sales leads generation.

After determining your objectives, you must establish the e-marketing methods you would use to achieve your objectives. It is not advisable for you to use just one method. It is always wiser to use multiple e-marketing methods.

Step 3: Set a budget and determine your strategies

You should identify the strategies and techniques that you would use to launch your e-marketing campaign. Determine the tactics you would use for implementing your marketing methods. You should formulate strategies that are geared towards capturing your target market’s attention. You must position and differentiate your strategies and establish your priorities.

It is also very important that you carefully budget your expenses, regardless of what objective you have set and what methods you would like to employ. Make sure that your costs will not spiral out of your control. Use the cost/benefit analysis in order to determine an acceptable budget. The benefits should more than compensate for your marketing costs.

Over the past few years, pay per click advertising has become an extremely popular option for online marketers.  Whether you are working for a large corporation or just have your own web site, PPC advertising can help you achieve your online marketing goals.  Thanks to the diversity of companies offering pay per click advertising (from the major search engines of Google, Yahoo and MSN to smaller players like Search Feed and 7Search), you can use PPC advertising to benefit your web site, regardless of your budget.  In order to help you understand the true potential of pay per click advertising, here are three benefits that it can provide:

Traffic-Obviously, this is the number one benefit of PPC advertising.  Because of the low costs of bidding on keywords, pay per click advertising can help you drive a large amount of traffic for a relatively low price.  The other major advantage of PPC traffic is the fact that it is instant.  Unlike organic traffic (which can many months or even a year to start coming for new web sites), you can start driving pay per click traffic to your web site right now.

Branding-Many online marketers are working under the misconception that once they have achieved strong organic search engine rankings, running a PPC campaign is worthless.  On the contrary, setting up and running a pay per click campaign is quite valuable, even if your web site is drawing in quality traffic organically.  The reason that a PPC campaign can compliment organic rankings is that it can help improve your web site’s branding.  When potential visitors see your web site listed twice in a search engine’s results, their trust for you will increase immensely.  This will translate into more leads and/or sales from your web site, along with more return visitors.

Easy Conversion Tracking-The reason I am adding this as a benefit is because it shows how much easier it is to control and manage your PPC budget versus an SEO or similar budget.  When it comes to PPC, you not only know exactly how much money your web site is generating, but you also know exactly how much you had to spend to make it.  This will help you carefully plan your budget and get the most results for the money you have.