Five Top Tips For A Prosperous 2004

According to many market forecasts, 2004 is likely to be a buoyant year online. These are my top tips for making the most of it, and ensuring a happy, healthy and prosperous 2004.

1. Seek out new markets and niches, and make them work for you.

This is a simple technique to find profitable niches for your business. Download the free Good Keywords software from goodkeywords.com - this is a virtual crystal ball into what you should be selling online. Find keywords that have a high number of searches, and a low number of pages for those keywords on the most popular search engine, Google. The ratio between the number of searches, and the number of results found for that keyword or phrase, determines the potential profitability of the keyword.

Another method is to use the free trial service at wordtracker.com.

Create a product or service around the profitable keyword, and you'll be onto a potential goldmine online.

2. Automate, automate, automate

If you find you are doing something repetitively, is it something you can automate? Automating a repetitive task is something that could save you hours, if not days or weeks of time, in 2004, all of which you could be spending doing something more worthwhile and profitable.

Automate almost everything you can, wherever possible. An Internet business allows for a great deal of automation, from list management to product fulfillment, so take advantage of it wherever you can.

3. Seek out non-email-reliant profit avenues

With spam filters, overloaded email folders, and increasing legislation proving ever-more troublesome to legitimate opt-in email marketers, it's wise to develop branches of your business that do not solely rely on email for profitability.

That's not to say email marketing is no longer relevant or important, it quite clearly is both of these when used effectively - but my tip for 2004 is to try to find other supplementary routes to profitability.

For example, a niche area in the search engines (as outlined in tip 1 above) will bring you a lot of traffic, without over-relying on email as a traffic and sales generation tool - and even if you don't have a specific product, if you combine great content with effective use of Google Adsense, that's another great income stream for your business.

Success online is all about not putting all your eggs into one basket, and developing 'multiple streams of income'. If you lost your email list(s) overnight, would you still be profitable?

4. Take more exercise

What? What's that got to do with doing business online?

Well, more than you think. For one, sitting in front of a computer for 12 hours a day can be detrimental to your health - and if you don't have your health, you won't have much of a business.

Getting some regular fresh air and exercise will not only help to keep you healthy, it will also:

• Increase your energy levels, so you can get a lot more done in less time.

• Clear your head, so you can concentrate more effectively.

• Help you to relax and come up with some great ideas for your business (my best and most profitable ideas come to me when I'm on vacation, or otherwise relaxed and 'switched off').

• Boost your confidence and self-esteem, the absence of which is often at the route of many business failures. When you're confident, you take more risks, and risk-taking is closely linked to profitability. If you stay the same, and take no risks, you're unlikely to move forward in your business.

And don't forget, while you are exercising, you can listen to educational tapes and CDs that will help you grow and learn, all of which can boost your business long-term.

5. Set goals

Close your eyes, and picture yourself at the end of 2004. Where would you like to be?

If you continue doing what you are doing now, where will you be, realistically?

Set some goals that will get you from where you are currently heading, to where you would like to be. Break those goals down into specific steps that know you can achieve, and will ensure you reach your goals by the end of 2004.

Refer to your goals regularly, don't be afraid to adjust them if necessary during the year, and take one step at a time.

About The Author

Steve Shaw develops software and systems for effective e-marketing. This article was submitted to hundreds of targeted publishers and multiple article directories on auto-pilot, using his powerful article submission service at http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com.

Steve has been marketing full-time online since March 2002, developing software products and systems for e-marketing, including PopUpMaster Pro, the Click Bank Toolkit, and most recently, the free list building system at ListInferno.com.

---

Ecards as a marketing tool

As any successful businessman will confirm, having a great product... Read More

Building Consumer Confidence Builds Sales

Many small online business owners have yet to understand the... Read More

Viral Marketing, New Means of Communications and Applications

Viral Marketing and Communications, Buzz Marketing, and Word of MouthMeans... Read More

Internet Promotion - Advantages and Disadvantages

The emergence of globalise trade, increase in foreign investment and... Read More

Internet Marketing Strategy:The Advertising Co-op

The advertising co-op is an Internet marketing strategy that should... Read More

Content, Content, Content.

Read any Internet marketing article, forum or tutorial these days... Read More

Internet Marketing: 10 Blazing Internet Marketing Secrets To Sky-Rocket Your Profits

Your turn to succeed has come.I am happy to offer... Read More

Sins of the Internet Marketing Godfathers

What is an Internet Marketing Godfather?Someone who I *perceive* to... Read More

I Don?t Smoke, But I Love a Good .sig!

.sig, or "Dot Sig" as it's affectionately known, stands for... Read More

Its All About The Leads: Publishing to Capture Profits

All online businesses are nothing more than lead capturing machines.... Read More

Ten Tried And Tested Viral Marketing Campaigns

Believe it or not, viral marketing did not originate from... Read More

Visibility Equates to Higher Profits

One of the greatest challenges businesses face is how to... Read More

12 Benefits of Internet Marketing for Your Business

1. Far Cheaper and Much More Flexible Than Print AdvertisingThe... Read More

Why Online Business - The Harsh Reminder Why Online Business Is For You

Many people want to achieve financial freedom and they know... Read More

Top 3 Free Marketing Techniques

If you have zero budget then this is the article... Read More

Internet Marketing Success Requires a Business Plan (Part II)

Formal business planning is a process that takes that "great... Read More

Limited Time Offers ? Time Limits That Will Improve Your Sales

Using limited time offers can spark a feeding frenzy that... Read More

My Secret To Selling More Big Ticket Items

Many aspiring Internet marketers hear all of the talk about... Read More

10 Amplifying Ways To Turn Up Your Sales Volume

1. Make your potential customers forget about the competition. Just... Read More

Highly Recommended Pre-Fab Marketing Business

Unfortunately most 'ready-made' business sites don't seem to be very... Read More

The Niche Website Naming Secret

Today I was optimizing a couple new websites for search... Read More

The Secret to Making More Money in Your Online Business: Lessons From Monopoly

Thousands and thousands of people are striving to make more... Read More

12 Steps to Creating a Business Online

"E-commerce"A word pervading our society, making headlines around the world,... Read More

Many Small Revenue Streams Are Best

There's an old story about a guy who had a... Read More

3 Simple Ways to Harness the Concept of the Free Offer for Internet Marketing

One of the reason why the concept of free stuff... Read More

Online Sales: 10 Magical Online Sales Tactics To Sell Your Products Faster

There are certain magical tactics that work so well that... Read More

Multiple Internet Profit Streams

Have you been searching without success for a way to... Read More

A Couple Of Basic Killer Internet Marketing Techniques

There are many simple, infallible ways to earn income, and... Read More

Build the Snowball and It Will Run

Setting up your own online business can seem extremely daunting.... Read More

My Top 7 Favorite Ecommerce Tools

When you make your living on the Internet, you sometimes... Read More

How To Profit Using Public Domain Works

The public domain is full of books, journals, literary works,... Read More

Online Advertising: 10 Flaming Hot Ways To Heat Up Your Sales

If you have a website but not making a lot... Read More

Autoresponders = Automatic Internet Marketing Success

What if you could send out all the information that... Read More