Building A Successful Business Using The Internet

None of the sites I've built are pretty, at best you can say "they look sincere." My last website looks better than the first website I built, and gets more traffic, but it does not sizzle. With what I know now, I could have learned more, worked harder, and had a nice, functional, growing website business in just a couple of weeks. It's a good thing I don't depend on the internet for my income.

I can Write For The Internet. After years of trial and error I now know some of the tools, tricks, and techniques. As I write this (2/2/2010) my educational importance lens is #5 overall out of almost a million lenses at Squidoo -- although my next best lens is well below that level.

Squidoo is cool and a valuable adjunct to business websites. But Squidoo is not at its best as a stand alone money maker. There is an enduring value to your own web site - as long as it is constructed well. With your own web site you have control, you make the decisions and rules.

I'm a business consultant, amongst other things. My goal has been to learn enough about the internet to advice clients on the selection of professionals to assist them. I learned enough to consult, I enjoyed tinkering with internet web sites, but I also learned something that surprised me.

Most websites don't work.

Not just my websites, but the vast majority of websites developed by so-called experts aren't worth the time and money to build and maintain them. A beautiful website can be ego food, but if it doesn't do what it needs to do, it is at best a distraction from things that work. A seldom visited online brochure may be attractive, but it is not the same as a well trafficked online business.

What I've learned as I've sought out a path to internet success falls into two categories. The first is familiarity with an assortment of scams and false promises; sometimes containing a kernel of truth if you can find it. The second is website management information - knowledge folks have gained and they are trying to share, usually over-priced.

It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, the data from the scams, before you spend your time and money. Even if you are lucky, data alone is not enough - you need a plan of action.

I have found two programs that have an ingredient that is missing from everything else I've looked at. They have the data, they are honorable and stand by their services, they have good track records at empowering their clients. What they have the others lack is that action plan; read a bit, do the relevant work, read a bit more - accomplish some detailed tasks - repeat.

I'll give you some more information and a way to contact these folks, but first there is an action plan you need to follow now.

Bookmark or favorite this page so you can research one of the resources first, and then come back here to research the second. Return as you develop your business to give progress reports. Finally, when you are done building and marketing your own website, come back again and leave a testimonial.

Step By Step


Both of the following recommendations for building a successful business using the internet are successful as stand alone tools. They use a direct, step by step process to guide you in your creative efforts. We will copy that kind of direct action plan.

First Step:

Investigate SiteSell and their Site Build It! (SBI) suite of website creation tools. You have three choices in how to use their Site Sell Services.

Build it yourself using their tools and software

Have your website built for you, SBI website creation tools combined with excellent web masters

Take the internet business course that helps you develop a money making website before you graduate.

If I have a friend, relative or student that wants a stay-at-home internet business to pay their rent, I send them to Site Build It.

Second step:

Start using SiteSell's SBI tools in one form or another. That means, depending on your available time and work ethic, you will soon have a functional, profitable, growing internet business. There will be plenty for you to do keeping your business growing, so why am I throwing in another internet business building recommendation?

A) One Week Marketing complements the Site Build It! suite you are already using by leveraging free web based tools like Squidoo.

B) it is a stand alone system that allows you to develop alternate sources of income (change happens, don't be so focused disruptions can close your doors).

C) dealing with the Pot Pie Girl gives another viewpoint from an honorable and accessible internet marketer.

"If you're willing to do for a year what others won't, you can do for a lifetime what others CAN'T!" - Pot Pie Girl

Jennifer's tutorials are your next big step.

A) you investigated SBI to determine if it could help you achieve the lifestyle you desire.

B) you selected the SiteSell service that best fits your financial and personal goals.

C) you created a profitable online business.

D) Now it is time to investigate Pot Pie Girl's (Jennifer) One Week Marketing, a solid education in understanding internet marketing as a business. Jennifer will give you a no charge, 18 page peek into One Week Marketing, start your investigation there.

Like SiteSell's offerings Jennifer not only provides knowledge , she provides a start here - step by step process that leads you in creation of another stream of income. Her checklist is meant to be completed in one week, it can save you years. Her very real "conversations with Nick," follows an e-mail exchange with one of her students - holding your virtual hand as she explains the how and why of starting an internet marketing business.

Jennifer will teach you how to establish some cash flow in a week, and how to add to that cash flow next week. In a year your 52 weeks of accumulated cash flows may provide a nice income, and you can keep building. Of course, like Squidoo lenses (and all business ventures), some micro-businesses will fail and others will do brilliantly. Keep working. Think how much you can learn in a year of diligent effort.

What will you be doing in a year if you don't try One Week Marketing?

Many people have been successful using just one of these courses, it is to your advantage to investigate, and use, both.

If I have a friend, relative, or student that wants to learn how to make money online, but they are broke, I send them to Pot Pie Girl's How To Build A Squidoo Page.

There will still be a lot to learn and do after you finish your SiteSell e-learning course and Jennifer's e-book series on web based marketing - but what did you expect after your first semester at a "relevant to real life" business school?

See why you needed to bookmark this page? Don't forget to come back again and leave comments on your progress.

Free time will come after you are successful. For now it's time to learn and work.

I've given you a mile, don't just take an inch.

You can put off changing your life, but it would be a mistake to put off investigating how to change your life.

Taking a laser focused college level course on building a successful business using the internet is a direct step toward discovering financial independence. Creating a business as part of the course; by learning then using sophisticated tools and procedures, is the sort of education that has long term value.

This course is not only for business students and MBA types. The websites you learn to build will also work for non-profits and social entrepreneurs. In fact, it is your desires as a student that are most important to your success.

Site Build It! has convincing proof that their programs work, but the proof means nothing unless you consider it yourself.

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"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable." - Helen Keller



100% of direct income from my lenses goes to micro-finance solutions for world poverty provided by the Grameen Foundation. The Grameen Foundation is creating a rising tide of positive influence upon our world. Help decrease poverty, by enabling the poor to support themselves.

Economist Claude Frédéric Bastiat 1801-1850
"Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works."