The other day I was reading a featured news article on a national daily about how once vibrant motorway connecting Canada with the USA through Monitoba is now almost empty and small towns on the way looks like ghost towns - so is the effect of the ensuing economic downturn caused by the sub-prime crisis. The effect has been severe across the world with Japan and Germany already declaring negative GDP growth. Many businesses, especially small ones are already out, and many are struggling to survive. Here comes the ecommerce solutions that may open  whole new windows of opportunities for small and medium scale businesses by way of reaching out to a larger clientele which was unthinkable before.

Ecommerce Solutions refers to a system where one can sell products or services through electronic medium - notably Internet. For this one needs to have a website where products will be presented for visitors to browse along with prices for each product. If a visitor likes a particular product, he or she can buy it by using the integrated shopping cart which will automate payment for the product leaving behind the shipping address. The owner just need to check these orders and ship them to the particular address given along with payment. Of course one first need an ecommerce enabled website to set up the online store which is just like a regular shopping store with the difference being - you don’t really need to hire a room to set-up the shop as you can easily run it from the comfort of your own house.

Website Design is the first step to set up the online store.  As most people are not computer geeks, I would like to suggest to hire some specialist web designer or companies to design the site. The cost is far less than ($500 on wards depending on the size and requirements of the site) hiring a room to set-up the shop. Firstly, what you want to sell at which price, take pictures of the products with brief but attractive descriptions and provide those to the designer. Your online store will be ready within few days!

The next and obvious  question is how to attract visitors, buyers to your store. It is not really very difficult! People use search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. to find the products they want to buy. So, one can reach out to clients through them. Indeed, online marketing and advertising has become really big in the US, Japan and Europe where people like to buy online rather than go to stores due to time constraint and work related stress. If you know nothing about online marketing you may hire. There are large numbers of them. Do a little bit of research and choose the one that best suits your budget and niche market.

This way, existing businesses can widen their clientele by reaching out to new audience through internet as sometimes you can even get clients from other countries buying you products, or those who lost their job should not worry. They can easily get into online business and never worry again for getting sacked.

Warning: Nothing comes easily, it may take some time before you canstart earning serious money. Just be patient and hold onto perseverance - you will discover life beyon the life you saw so far.

As a webmaster for more than two years and coming from a developing country, I am often at pains to see the wide gap that exist between business of developed countries and that of the developing world. The difference I am talking about here is that of use of technology in enhancing business opportunities. This is the 1st century - an age of information super high way. People no longer have to go to shop to buy and carry things required for day to day livelihood. The y can just open the internet browser, find the local grocery website and order things they require - those things will be delivered in his doorstep shortly.

Yes, I am talking about the enormous opportunities the world wide web has opened up specially to small business houses. Take the example of Seatwave, a UK based company that facilitates clients to buy and sell theater tickets, sports tickets or tickets for festivals, concert etc. through its online portal. Not only this, business concerns of the UK - big or small have they own website stores through which they can easily sell their products. It makes a convenient life bot both businesses and their clients.

Sadly, businesses in developing countries are still lagging behind in this field and loosing out on a huge source of etra revenues. They are not only loosing to properly tag the local clientele - but also their reach to new clientele far beyond is being hampered. Of course there are reasons behind this short coming. First of all, they lack awareness where the information department of respective governments can do a lot in creating it and educating entrepreneurs besides educating the public. A vast gap between technologically haves and have nots was already created during last century - so all must come forward to bridge that gap during this century.

Banner design is a very important factor in effective online advertising.  Banner are basically made up of images and text, and made more appealing by multi-media designs such as Flash animation.  But how does one make an attractive and effective banner design? Here are 8 guides for online marketers:

1. Headline: Think of a catchy and witty phrase that will sum up what your offer is all about.  An attractive headline gets results especially if it’s interesting enough for Internet users to take notice.

2. Related content.  Make sure that the content that is displayed on the banner is related to products and services that are found on your site. Most users click on ad banners and expect to get real information on products and services. 

3. Insert logo and URL. In order to promote your brand name, include your logo and website address! This way the visitor will be more enticed to visit your website. 

4. Make use of the words “free” as well as “click here”.   These words are proven to entice internet users to check on your banner.  It is second nature for anyone to check on anything that is free.  This especially works for online stores which really give something for free. Highlight this feature of your website and expect a significant increase in your CTR or click through ratio.

5. Be wary of your file size! Remember that your banner should have a small file size so that it can load quickly, even before a visitor goes to another page.  The smaller the size of a banner, the easier it is to load the banner. 

6. Make it colorful. Use bright colors and catchy fonts for the banner.  Do not however sacrifice the readability of the text for too bright font colors.

7. Make it look professional. Make a professional-looking banner to add attractiveness and credibility to your product or website.

8. Make it quick.  Remember, at most it takes 10 seconds for internet users to view the topmost portion of any website, so you have to give your company’s message within this time frame.

The concept of banner advertising has become one of the best and most efficient tools in online advertising.  Simply put, online banner ads contain texts and animations that aim to attract the user into reading information about a product.

Banner ads are often catchy and attractive because they need to get the attention of the Internet user.  When the said user finds the banner intriguing, chances are he or she will click on the banner.  The banner then links the user to the website of the company.  Banners usually are defined by impressions.  A thousand impressions can be worth 20 to 100 bucks. Not to be confused with impressions is unique visitors, which is basically a browser going navigating several pages of the website. The number of pages that the browser visits is however called multiple page impressions.

There is not much difference however with banner advertising from other traditional forms of advertising.  The specific details of the target audience are always kept in min.  However, in online or banner advertising, identifying specifics of the target market is much easier.  All a marketer has to do is go to a site that is frequented by a specific target market.  For example, a marketer can identify which websites are frequented by teenagers, by young professionals, and so on.  Then the marketer can place an ad in the particular website.

To guide marketers in implementing an efficient banner ad campaign, remember these pointers:

* Do not just place a banner on the front page of a website.  Alternatively, the banner can be place on a sub-link.  This way, interested browsers will actually comprise the website’s impressions. 

* Choose a banner design that is catchy but does not give too much information

*Ideally banner size should be as small as 5K and no larger than 20K.

*Keep it animated.  Banners with animation attract more internet users.

*Use catchy phrases so people will be enticed to click on the link.

Remember that properly designed and placed banner ads will help the business in the long run, especially in driving more traffic to your website.

Introduction:-

The internet begun in 1969, as an experimental four-computer network called ARPAnet which was designed by the U.S. Defense Department. In 1990, ARPAnet was officially disbanded and the network, which now consisted hundreds of sites, came to be known as the INTERNET.

Since then, the internet has been growing at an exponential pace as commercial organizations and establishments realized the endless opportunities World Wide Web (WWW) has presented them to explore new markets and reach to consumers which was out of imagination earlier. These business interests in turn, brought with them huge amount of money onto cyber world and soon internet grew into a giant entity accounting for billions of dollars of business every day.

Basic Concepts of Earning Online:-

In a single quote – earning online is “Pure Normal Business”. Internet is sometimes called the Cyber World or Virtual World. As is the case with our normal life, we must work hard to earn. The work may depend on the qualification and skills a person have. Similarly, there are varieties of jobs found on the net which offer enormous opportunity to all those who does not like the conventional 10a.m.-5pm. Job. The income potential is seemingly endless as one can earn as much as he wants to. Here too, income may vary depending on knowledge and skills. Naturally, someone with coding and programming experience will earn more than someone who has just some basic knowledge on computers.