Selling on auction sites, selling eBooks, making money via Google Adwords… all these and more are very popular ways of making money online. But should you automatically go for the same old methods that everyone else is trying?

This is a thorny issue. Many more people arrive online every single day, looking for a way to earn extra money or start a whole new career. But whatever your end goal might be, it’s vital not to limit yourself right from the start. Internet marketing offers a multitude of opportunities to consider. You certainly shouldn’t just go for the first thing you come across.

The one thing that happens a lot online is that someone new will read about a successful marketer and decide they can make lots of money in the same way. But instead of doing their research and finding out all they can about how they did it, they focus on that end result. They focus on the money and the success. But of course, you cannot expect to get there without the knowledge required.

The other sin that many people are guilty of is jumping in too fast. The internet is a huge place, and it is getting bigger by the day. If you dive straight in to the first opportunity you set eyes on, how will you know if it is the best one for you?

Many people also limit themselves by thinking they are only capable of doing certain things. They don’t give themselves a chance to stretch out and explore the world of online marketing in more depth. It’s said that knowledge is power, and there is probably no other place where that is more applicable than the internet.

Why limit yourself by sticking to what other people tell you that you can and can’t do? Explore what’s out there; evaluate all the opportunities you can find and research them before doing anything else. Only then will you be able to make an educated decision about what is best for you.

The internet also gives us the chance to try out new things. It’s not so easy to switch careers in the real job world, but if you want to try your hand as a writer, a photographer, or an affiliate online, you can do so virtually straightaway. Too many people accept the same limitations online as they impose on themselves offline.

That’s not to say you should automatically ignore the old favourites though. Some people are making a full time job out of selling on auction sites, so they are clearly working well. The same goes for selling eBooks; if you have the knowledge people are looking to pay money for, then you can capitalise on it without a doubt.

So what is the moral here? Perhaps it should be that limitations are merely walls that you put up for yourself where previously there were none. Bear that in mind when you are thinking about how you can make money online.

We’ve all seen them. In its various different sizes the humble banner has cut a swathe across the internet for many years, advertising anything and everything you can think of.

But has the banner had its day? Do we ever really look at them in the same way that we did when they were new and exciting? It’s very much an individual point of course. Some people look at them all the time, while others no doubt gloss over them and cease to notice them at all.

If you take a look at the vast amount of web marketing efforts going on today, you will notice that a fair amount of it is banner advertising. So clearly it’s not a case of banners being used less than they have been in the past. Some websites might choose to offer other types of advertising than the banner, but surely that is a personal choice made by the webmaster rather than anything else. Some people certainly have a preference for different types of advertising, and that may be determined by the amount of space they have to promote on their website or blog more than anything else.

Perhaps it is more the response to banner advertising that is making people decide whether to keep using them or to ditch them instead. But can we lay that at the door of the banner format itself – or the people who are creating them?

Quite often it is the latter that is responsible for how well a banner performs, as opposed to the fact that it is a banner. If you frequent some of the biggest and most well known websites around today, you will see that some of them have large banners somewhere on the page. But these aren’t always plain static banners – they will usually be animated ones that cycle through a specific presentation. It’s rather like watching a mini television advert on your computer.

So is this the way of the banner now? It seems as if it could be. After all it is known that they don’t attract the attention quite as much as they used to. It seems that people might actually take more notice of online marketing methods that have some movement in them. They do catch the eye rather more than any static banner ever could.

It’s obviously not the end for the banner. Just as with every other promotional tool in the past, it too has to change and develop as time moves on. The internet is always changing and so are the needs and expectations of the people who use it. The static and boring banner may well have served the purpose well a few years ago, but it will get left behind now.

If you are using banners which are past their sell by date, perhaps it’s time you had another look at them. It’s never too late to overhaul your advertising and make it work even better than it does now.

How seriously do you take promoting your business? If you have your own website then you will know that web marketing is essential if you are going to stay one step ahead of your competition.

Unfortunately, just like everything else in life it’s so easy to get stuck in a rut with your advertising and promotion routine. Most businesses know that they need to be advertising constantly to stand a chance of continuing to build their customer base and selling more items or services in the future, but if the methods they are using to do this remain the same all the time they are likely to be left behind sooner or later.

The reason for this is that the internet is developing at such a fast pace that what was cutting edge yesterday could be old news by tomorrow. New ways to promote internet businesses apart from the usual search engine optimization techniques that we are all getting used to are constantly breaking through, and that means we need to be on our toes if we are going to carry on developing into the future.

A clear example of new media advertising in recent times has been the option to use social networking sites – previously only meant for people to find friends and share their hobbies – to promote businesses in a more casual way. And with every day that goes past, someone somewhere finds another way of advertising their website that hasn’t been thought of before.

We’re not saying here that you should be the one out there finding new ways to promote your business – after all the main focus should always be on serving your customers and making sure that you aren’t getting left behind as the internet world moves on – but you should definitely be keeping up with what other people are doing so that you can use those techniques yourself. It’s far easier to tweak methods already tried by other people than it is to try and find the time to test them yourself.

Of course it isn’t just how you advertise but where that can make a difference. If you find that your existing methods aren’t getting the results they used to then it could be time to look at the latest ways to get peoples’ attention, even if that requires a bit of research to carry it off.

Some businesses have enough employees to task someone with the job of finding new ways to get their message across, but others are one man band efforts and when that is the case it falls to that person to experiment wherever they feel it is necessary.

But even if it takes more work for that to happen, that is the only way you are going to keep up with new solutions and methods for promoting your business, and that in turn will enable you to keep up with your competition.

If you have a website the chances are pretty good that you will constantly be tweaking it and playing around with it to make sure it looks as good as it possibly can for everyone who visits it.

But have you thought about what people will see if they were to access your website using their mobile phone or other similar device?

If you haven’t thought along these lines yet, you are not alone. A lot of website owners haven’t looked into it yet – and many people don’t even realise that there is a difference between a site you view on the web and a site you view on your mobile phone.

In reality there isn’t a huge difference; but if your website is mobile friendly it will simply be a lot easier to view on a small screen than it would be otherwise. There is still the assumption that everyone viewing a website will do so on a nice big computer screen, but of course that isn’t the case, and if you don’t cater for the people who surf the internet while they are out and about you may well lose out on potential customers who cannot view your site well enough to persevere with looking around it.

In a sense, having a mobile friendly website is just another form of website marketing. You need to consider the different ways in which a person will find your site and use it, and the easier you can make it for them the more chances you will have to make more sales.

So what does the future hold for mobile accessible websites? Will people really continue to access the internet in the way it has been forecast? Some people think that the mobile phone will be the most popular way of going online within the next year or two, so there is every chance that those websites that aren’t mobile friendly could end up lagging behind the rest as we all compete to get peoples’ attention on the small screen.

Of course some things won’t change. Just because a website is made to be viewed on a mobile phone just as easily as on a computer screen, that doesn’t mean you can shirk your usual search engine optimization duties, because everything else remains the same as far as finding your site in the first place is concerned.

So it will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years. Some people thought we would all be using the internet via our mobiles already, so perhaps the forecast is slightly more optimistic than the actual picture itself will appear, but only time will tell what actually happens.

If you decide not to worry about this aspect of having a mobile friendly website, you do run the risk of being left behind if it does take off in a big way. You should always have one eye to the future and be on the cutting edge, not bringing up the rear.

Back in November 2007, NASDAQ decided to create an index of the top one hundred companies that were involved in providing services and/or goods on the internet. But has it made enough of a splash – or are there still plenty of people who still haven’t even heard of it, one year on?

There is no questioning the fact that this was a good idea, at least in part. But like all good ideas it does have its drawbacks as well, not least of which is that the very nature of it means it really only applies in the US. Still, within that area it does have its place and perhaps we should expect a new index such as this one to take some time in establishing itself.

So what does this index tell us? Well in short, it tells us how the top one hundred internet companies that are concerned with internet marketing or other similar services are performing against each other. But since this only applies in that one country we have no way of figuring out how internet businesses are doing as a whole.

But maybe it will pave the way for a more global view of the internet market in the future. Most people would agree that while the high street suffers in times of hardship and recession, the internet never really seems to have many problems. Cheaper prices and the absence of queues and other hassles are indicative of every single online business, and that means people are more likely, not less likely, to flock to the internet when money is tight.

The NASDAQ internet index can certainly back this up as far as those top performing businesses in the US are concerned, and maybe if a similar system was set up in each individual country – or at least the main performers in this arena – we could start to see how many more internet businesses are doing in the current climate.

But as far as the names included on that top one hundred are concerned, there is really no big surprise as to what some of them are. Amazon and Google are both there for example, as are Expedia and eBay – all big names that are known globally. In this sense the NASDAQ index does have value for anyone who lives outside the US, since it gives us a benchmark to compare other sites to. It also allows us to discover what it takes to get on that top one hundred.

Now it is true to say that the vast majority of us will never even get close to getting on that list, but studying the businesses that have made it will no doubt help us to build better web marketing businesses ourselves. After all we can see at a glance what has got these businesses to where they are, and that means we can identify how to improve our own businesses – even if they will always remain on a much smaller scale.

The current economic climate is very troubling for almost everyone. If you are working for someone else you will be concerned about your job security and about the likelihood of having no wage rises for the foreseeable future. And if you are working for yourself you will no doubt be spending more time than ever trying to figure out how to cut costs wherever you can and attract more customers to keep your business healthy – even if that means reducing prices to a certain degree.

We’ve often been told that internet marketing businesses are safer from such economic woes than standard brick-and-mortar ones. And there are certainly more and more cases of local businesses – and even well known names – shutting down because they are no longer able to trade profitably.

But during all this upheaval are internet based businesses really untouchable? Can they really ride out any kind of recession with no issues or problems at all? After all it seems hard to believe that when other businesses are falling left, right and centre, e-commerce companies are staying exactly as they were before.

In truth there will be e-commerce businesses that fall by the wayside during this time, but they tend not to be noticed quite as much as more traditional businesses are. You would certainly spot the difference if a shop you walked past every day suddenly closed down, and yet unless you bought stock from a website continually you probably wouldn’t notice if it went the same way.

And of course websites have lower overheads. Apart from hosting costs and the yearly or twice yearly nominal payment for the domain name, there is really very little else you need to think about to keep a website up and running twenty four hours a day.

It is also true to say that there are plenty of activities you can get involved in online to promote your business without having to spend any money in the process. Search engine optimization is just one example, and it can help get a website ranked higher and seen by more people.

So it is probably fair to say that while e-commerce businesses are still at risk of going under during a recession, they are less likely to than their high street counterparts. So long as the person in charge of the business keeps their head on their shoulders and concentrates on balancing the books and making sure the business isn’t investing too much money when it can ill afford to, an internet venture stands a far better chance of making it for the long term than any other business does.

But if you have an e-commerce business of your own, don’t take this as a sign to sit back and relax and think that you can do no wrong. Now is a more important time than ever to concentrate on attracting customers and keeping your business afloat, so that when any recession passes you will still be there to make more sales in the future.

Okay now be honest. Do you have copies of all your work – and do you update them regularly? What would happen now if you suddenly lost all your work, your computer crashed irretrievably or your laptop was stolen?

If you have a website or do most of your work on computer then you owe it to yourself to keep back ups of all the data you have. Even though your hosting provider may be completely secure and your website is in no danger at all of crashing or being lost, we all know that things do happen and if you don’t have back ups of anything then you run the risk of losing everything – and by that I mean your whole business.

And it’s not just a question of security either. It’s practical to keep a back up of everything because you never know when you may need it. Let’s suppose you have ten categories of goods on your website, and each category has twenty products in it. If you needed that information for web marketing to enable you to put your products on eBay as well as on your own site, it’s a lot easier to have a word document to work from that you can edit and tweak as you need to, than to copy the content from your website and use that. No matter what your website design is like, you’ll find this a tricky and frustrating option to go for – and all for saving some space on your hard drive.

The best bet is to keep more than one copy and keep them in separate places. If you have a safe, make a copy of everything and put it in there. It might sound like overkill but if you ever need it you will be glad it’s there.

It’s quite alarming how many people and businesses there are out there today, online and offline, who don’t take adequate security measures with their data. Protection is vital in any type of business and internet marketing is no different. Even if the data you are backing up has no real value in any way – that is, no one could get any profit out of it if they got hold of it themselves – that doesn’t mean it has no value and it wouldn’t cost you if you lost it.

Unfortunately, some people think of backing up only the things that have a definite monetary value completely missing the point that, if they had to re-type all their product descriptions, this would cost them a lot of time and effort. And of course, if their website was offline in the meantime, they would end up losing money anyway. Sometimes not everything is black and white.

So why not take some time out now to make sure you won’t fall victim to data loss if anything happened to your work. If something happens tomorrow, you’ll be glad you acted today.

When it comes to getting online, you have two choices. You can either go for dial-up, which uses a phone line to get online and therefore ties up that phone line whenever you are on the internet, or you can opt for broadband, which is permanently on, permanently available, and often one hundred times faster than dial-up.

This simple but very distinct difference between the two options almost answers the question posed in the title without any further thought at all. If you are serious about running a proper business – even if that business is based at home – then you really must have broadband to get the best from your business. If you don’t have it you will soon become frustrated at the limitations that dial-up gives you.

When we hear about how various people set up their businesses online and delve into the various aspects of website marketing and how to provide the best service to their customers, you will never hear too much about what service they use to go online with themselves. But you can almost guarantee that they will be using broadband.

The only situation in which the owner of an online business might just get away with using dial-up is if their website runs virtually on autopilot, and the only thing they need to do is to hop online occasionally to see what is going on and to check their stats.

But just imagine trying to run a business in which you are constantly online fulfilling orders and making sure that customers are satisfied. Anyone who has tried using dial-up in the long and distant past will know that it has a tendency to cut you off, and it is also much slower than broadband. What this means is that even if you aren’t cut off at any point you will certainly notice that it takes much longer to process orders due to the slower speed of entering websites and pages than it would if you were using broadband.

It’s reasonable to think that the smallest business just starting out online could get by for a time on dial-up. But once that business reaches any kind of success then broadband becomes almost necessary to encourage further growth.

One other point worth bearing in mind is that because dial-up internet connections tie up your phone line, you would either have to be unobtainable on the phone (not good for customer relations) or you would have to have another dedicated phone line put in. When all is said and done you are much better off simply opting for broadband in the first place – it’s probably cheaper.

Internet marketing is a business strategy that tends to attract all kinds of people to it and has an image of being an easy business to succeed in. This is far from being the truth, of course, but some people will try and build a business without having the right tools to succeed – and one of those tools must surely be broadband.

How many times have you visited a website, seen something that you liked for a few dollars, popped it into your basket… and then discovered that the postage charge effectively doubles the price of the item you want?

This isn’t uncommon online and while postage charges often benefit those who are ordering multiple items from the same website they do tend to sting people who are only looking to buy one thing. That’s why it pays to keep an eye on what you are charging your own customers to buy items from you, because if you get the balance wrong you could end up sending people elsewhere to buy what they want.

Of course it isn’t always as simple as that. While your website marketing may benefit from promoting low postage costs you need to ensure that you won’t lose money by offering rock bottom postage prices. Some companies offer free carriage on everything you buy, but they are few and far between and they tend to be huge in nature – not a small business that is selling perhaps fifty or sixty items a week or less.

The idea of course is that by offering low or free postage you will attract more people to buy from you, but if you aren’t getting the footfall to your website in the first place it could effectively wipe out all your profits in one fell swoop. Think about the type of goods you sell as well; if you are selling temporary tattoos then your postage costs will always be very low, since they will all go in standard envelopes or small postal bags that don’t cost much to mail out. And bigger orders will bring in more profit to cover the slightly higher mailing costs.

If you are selling heavy items however, or anything bulky that cannot go through the normal mailing system, you would almost certainly lose a lot of cash through giving everyone free postage. You need to work out a good balance between having a business that is attractive to your customers and a business that is bringing in a healthy profit for you. If you can achieve both then you are well on the way to a successful business.

Some businesses opt for a flat rate on their postage, which does at least make it easy for your customers to see what they have to pay. And it does work well at encouraging them to order more as they don’t need to pay extra for it. Other people opt for the tiered postage rates which work on weight more often than not.

In the end it may be a case of trial and error to see what works best for you in your e-commerce endeavours, because no two businesses will be exactly the same. And so long as your customers are happy with the service you are giving them, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem, no matter what your postage charges are pegged at.

Business directories can be a worthwhile place to promote any business, because a lot of people still rely on them to find a local business which appeals to their needs. But are offline directories still worth the effort it takes to get your details included in them?

There is no doubt that website promotion in any form is a good thing, since it will always bring businesses into contact with people who may not have been previously aware of them. But in these internet fuelled times many businesses that exist purely online and do not have an offline store at all don’t tend to think beyond the internet very often when it comes to finding new customers.

They might use pay per click advertising on a regular basis to attract new customers but the thought of checking out forms of advertising and promotion which do not involve the internet at all may not even enter their heads.

But should they really be forgotten completely? It is true to say that the vast majority of business directories that are created in book format for distributing door to door don’t contain that many internet based businesses in them – if any at all. You would certainly be hard pushed to find them on every page.

The truth is that as the internet evolved, a whole new type of business directory evolved with it – the directory that only exists online. In reality it isn’t that different from the offline version, except that many more internet businesses are included in it, and when you think about it the reason why is quite obvious.

If you want to find a bricks and mortar business your natural response would be to search through a traditional directory to get the details of the one you want. And if you wanted a website, you would go online to find it in an online business directory.

This seems to be one area where the divide is obvious, and while there is no real reason why the two areas should not overlap, it doesn’t seem very likely that they will do so in any great way in the near future.

But does that mean you should forget about traditional business directories altogether?

In some cases the answer would have to be yes. These directories list the address and phone number of the business concerned; very rarely will you see a website address – unless the business takes out a display ad in that publication and has room to add it. If your business is run from home and does not accept visitors, you may not want your address listed in this manner as it could be misleading to people. But if you use an online directory it is geared more towards internet businesses. A clickable link pointing towards the company’s website will often be included, and it will be very attractive for anyone searching the site to use.

So think carefully when you start listing your business in different directories and be sure to develop a strategy that best suits your type of business.