Everyone wants to make a success of their internet business. But there are millions of web site businesses and very few of them make a healthy profit. Lets look at the structure of a successful internet business and see how we can use it to make our own business successful.

Products: Every good business needs a group of products. You can find these from three areas:

* Make your own
* Buy in products and resell them
* Sell other peoples products as an affiliate

Potential: There is a very famous saying in advertising You dont sell the steak you sell the sizzle. What this means is that you sell what your products can do for your customers. In other words you sell the potential for a better life/career/business/income that your product can provide. Please be careful not to over sell your products. Your sales letter and web copy must be accurate and reflect the actual benefits of your products and services. This does not mean you should be unduly modest, by all means make big claims, but make sure you can prove and demonstrate anything you promise.

Promises: What guarantees do you offer? Be they price, return on investment, return of purchase price etc. People are understandably wary of purchasing unknown items from web sites so provide a secure process with a return guarantee. Similarly when asking people to sign onto your ezine promise them that you will not spam them.

Pricing: Pricing is important too expensive and you will lose purchasers. Too low and people will think that the product is worthless or too good to be true. People are unlikely to purchase a product at above $100 without knowing you and your business quite well. This is generally believed to be the cut off price for an impulse buy.

Perception: You must take time to ensure that your potential customers see you as both an expert in your field and trustworthy. You can do this with your web site and sales copy and by ensuring that your name is well known around the internet.

Consistency: Ensure that wherever and whenever your potential customer comes across your name, web sites or products that are always consistently the same. Look at how MacDonalds does this worldwide. Build yourself a good brand image by using the same design functions and the same product naming conventions hence our PowerPacks.

Confidence: Make your customer feel safe to purchase from you by using a secure environment, a well known payment processor and autoresponder service. Dont spam your list and dont send to many emails. Ensure that you do not come over as needy or aggressive in your interaction with your customer. Never ever ask for financial or personal information that you do not need.

Credibility: Build your credibility by offering samples of your work, pointing out past and current achievements and printing honest and checkable testimonials.

Communication: In order to show that you are a real living person behind your products and web site it is important to keep up regular communication with your customers and potential customers. You can do this by:

* Using an autoresponder service with regular and relevant messages.
* Having your contact details such as email and telephone number on your site and correspondence.

Competition: Always keep in touch with your competition, what they are doing and what new products are being sold. Ensure that you keep your prices and products up to date and continue to seek out niches and market demands that you can soon fill.

Keep your Ps and Cs in mind and your business should be a success! Good Luck.

Lee Lister

Lee Lister is Management Consultant and Program Manager with more than 25 year's management and consultancy experience and more than 20 year's program and project management experience in projects for Banking, Finance, Insurance, Leisure and Government bodies. She also have more than 10 years bid management experience ranging from bids for medium companies to large international and infrastructure bids.

British born, Lee received her BA(Hons) Financial Economics from the University of Essex. She went on to work in or for a considerable number of countries within Asia and Europe as well as Australia and the United States. While building a name for herself through helping company restructure, change management and project management consultancy, Lee became a well-known figure for her skills in analyzing, problem solving and trouble-shooting. She has consulted for many major industries, including banking, telecommunications, insurance, transportation, leisure and governments from many different countries. Some of the companies who have benefited from Lee’s expertise are Hewlett Packard, Siemans Nixdorf, Electrolux and the Philippines government.

Whilst working in the Far East she became a recognized expert on preparing and evaluating large World Bank Proposals (infrastructure projects within developing countries). These accomplishments called upon the skills of bid and project management, risk assessment, contract negotiation and supplier management and required dedicated work to very tight time scales. This expertise was acknowledged by an invitation to be the principle speaker at an International Business Development Conference in Washington, USA. She has also consulted at very senior level in several countries.

She owns and manages two companies, Biz Guru LLC in the USA and Biz Guru Services Ltd in the UK as well a considerable number of profitable web sites. She works almost entirely via the internet, visiting clients on site during major consultancies and training. Her Internet skills span from when major companies first started to consider obtaining their own web sites. During these years, she has kept up to date with the rapid changes on the internet, including the dot com boom and the resulting bust – which her own web based companies survived.

She regularly consults, writes and lectures on business, bid management and marketing and has published numerous courses and books.