The Most Effective Way For Newbies to Get New Customers on the Internet

Let’s face it, finding new customers is one of the essential ingredients in learning how to start home businesses. And there are only FOUR ways to get a fresh supply of customers to come to your web site looking for your product: Method #1 - Send them an email. But how many email addresses do you have of people who want your particular product? And how long will it take to go through those...a week, a month?

Method #2 - Have someone who knows your product send their friend an email about your product. Again, although this can be effective, it takes lots of time to build a network of referrals. Do you have months or maybe years to wait for significant sales?

Method #3 - Pay for advertising on the Search Engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo. When someone searches on a term, like "dogs", you will see advertisements on far right hand side called "sponsored ads". People are actually paying to put their advertisement there. And while this is effective, you had better know what you are doing and watch your pennies!

Method #4 - Figure out how to get your web page to show up on the first page of a search engine like Google when people type in a particular search term. Then they will visit your page and buy your product.

Think about method #4 again. Hundreds or thousands of new customers every month coming to your web site! That is what the search engines can give you. And this is one of the most important concepts in learning how to start home businesses.

Now, not everyone who visits your site will buy, but that’s okay because you will have brand new visitors the next day and the next day and so on and so on. So, researching what search terms, which is another name for keywords, that people are using to find your particular product is essential to stepping into that oncoming traffic.

Perhaps an example would help.

When I built my first web page, I had no clue about keywords, search terms or even search engines for that matter. I basically had a "lemonade stand" on a lonely deserted street and I wondered why no one was visiting my lemonade stand and buying my lemonade!

And it didn't matter that I had the cheapest lemonade, or the best tasting lemonade or even the prettiest lemonade stand. Without a steady stream of visitors, I was not going to sell any lemonade!

Then someone told me about keywords and search engines. So I optimized my web page for the keyword in my niche that had the most searches in a given period. But I still didn't sell anything because, even though I was on the busiest corner in town (the keyword with the most traffic), I did not take into account the competition for that keyword.

Basically, I was trying to position my lemonade stand on a corner that already had 2.2 million lemonade stands there. And since I was the new kid on the block, there was no way I was going to muscle out 2.2 million established lemonade stands to get on the first page of Google!

So, what to do?

Finally, I got smart and chose a less busy corner that still had daily traffic, but also had less competing lemonade stands. And then I found other corners like that one and placed another lemonade stand there. I may not be on the busiest corner, but I am on several busy corners that I can dominate!

What is the moral of this story?

Choose keywords for your web page that are related to your topic and have high demand and low competition. Optimize your web pages for those particular keywords, get some backward links through articles and then, watch the visitors stream in...every day! And more visitors will translate into more sales!