Aussie Wholesalers Newsletter - The Premier Australian Wholesaler Information Source for Australian Businesses
January 3, 2007 - Issue 12

In this issue:

1) "The 7 Essential Steps to Building your Own Profitable Website"
2) "Aussie Wholesale Suppliers Guide 2007 - Updates!"
3) "Visit our Newsletter Archives"
4) "Essential Links & Resources"

1) The 7 Essential Steps to Building your Own Profitable Website

I often get asked how to go about building your own website, so in this issue, I've decided to share with you, the seven basic steps you must take to help ensure your new website is a resounding success!

Step 1: Locate your niche market.
In general, the most successful internet businesses, are those which are targeted to a very narrow niche market. The only exceptions being portal/vortal websites - websites that contain a lot of information, usually on one subject, which attract a lot of traffic, & can then sell advertising space to related companies. A good niche website is also a lot cheaper & easier to promote, as you know exactly who your target market is. To locate your niche market, try brainstorming a list of things that you have a good knowledge of, or an interest in. Then, by using a good keyword reasearch tool like Wordtracker, you can discover if people are looking for items/information on your list; if so, what exactly they are looking for; & if there is much competition from other websites.

Step 2: Decide how you are going to meet your customers needs.
How can you provide a solution to the problem your customers have? Can it be provided through a physical product, or an information product? If you are supplying a physical product, then how are you going to produce it - will you make it yourself, purchase from a wholesaler, or try & find a suitable dropshipper? These are just a few of the questions you will have to answer once you've located your market. Another important thing to consider, is are your customers prepared to pay for a solution to their problem. If they aren't, you may have to consider a vortal website, where you provide the information for free, then make your money from selling advertising space.

Step 3: Register a domain name & choose a web host.
Registering a domain name is a relatively simple, painless process. You can register a .com domain name for 1 year for anywhere between $5 & $20 - the US run domain registration sites are cheaper than Australian domain rego. sites, & there are no problems with the fact that you live in Australia, but you are registering the domain with a US company. When choosing a domain name, try to find one that is not too long, is easy for your customers to remember, & contains some of the keywords your potential customers will type into the search engines.

The main factor you need to consider when choosing a web host is reliability. Ideally you want a host that can offer you at least 99.9% uptime on their servers - if their servers go down, your website is offline! Once again, US web hosts are usually far cheaper than Australian hosts.

Step 4: Design your website.
Designing a website these days is a far simpler process than it was 10 years ago. Basic HTML (website code) is not too difficult to learn after a while, but if you really don't like the idea of playing around with HTML editors (programs like Dreamweaver & MS FrontPage) there are other options. There are sites on the net that you can go to, & pay someone else as little as $100 to design a basic website for you - a good example of one of these sites is Rent-A-Coder.

Step 5: How are you going to accept payments?
The ability to accept credit card payments on your site these days is a must, unless you want to lose up to 80% of potential sales. Fortunately though, there is no need to spend large amounts of money setting up a merchant account, with PayPal providing a secure, safe & convenient way for your customers to pay using their credit card. There is no set-up fee to open a PayPal account, & the only on-going fees come when you make a sale - PayPal takes a very small percentage of each sale. Another payment processor to consider is Paymate, who run on a very similar system to PayPal.

Step 6: Drive traffic to your site.
It can take weeks, even months, for your website to start appearing in search engines across the internet, so what is the best way to get traffic to your site without spending a fortune? My personal pick is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on one of the 3 leading search engines - Google, Yahoo & MSN. Google receives about 60% of search engine traffic, so they should probably be the first ones to try. With PPC advertising, you only pay each time someone clicks on your ad, & you can set a maximum that you are prepared to pay for each click, plus a maximum daily budget, to ensure you don't spend more than you want to.

Step 7: Testing, testing, testing.....
The last thing you must remember, is to test everything! Many internet businesses find, that if they change just a few little words on their site, it can lead to a dramatic increase in sales. If you don't test everything - your graphics, sales copy, advertising etc. - there is a very good chance you are losing money.

By following these seven simple steps, you can help your website become the success you want it to be in the space of just a few months. Many internet businesses fail though, because they skip the first, vitally important step, & try to provide a solution, that people aren't looking for, so make sure you don't fall into the same trap!

2) Aussie Wholesale Suppliers Guide 2007 - Updates!

The latest update to the suppliers guide has just been sent out to all our customers. Over 35 new Australian wholesalers have been added in this update, bringing the total number of wholesalers to close on 550!

Updates include:

• Clothing - 10 new wholesalers
• Electronics - 2 new wholesalers
• CD's/DVD's - 3 new wholesalers
• Jewellery - 2 new wholesalers
• Sporting Goods - 4 new wholesalers
• Nursery/Infant Products - 3 new wholesalers
• Plus additions to Giftware/Homewares, Souvenirs, & more.

3) Visit our Newsletter Archives

Don't forget to visit our newsletter archives, jam-packed full of helpful articles from previous newsletters.

http://www.aussiewholesalesuppliers.com.au/newsletters/newsarchive.html

4) Essential Links & Resources

Copyright, Rachel Incoll, 2007

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