One might argue that the whole point of trying to make money online is that the market opens up globally and is not confined to the town in which you reside.

This is of course true, but just because you are offering something on a global scale, does not mean you should forget about where you come from.

Many people will buy things based on the fact that they are local. It is just easier to trust someone from your own town than it is from further away. This might not always be logical, it’s just one of those things. Perhaps people feel like they can find you if you rip them off.

Anyway, the point is, you need to be optimized for local traffic. This means getting found in the search engines for local keywords, and finding as many local publications and directories to be listed in as possible.

Your site should clearly state where you are located, and should be optimized for searches for that location.

Not all of your customers will be from near you, but if you make an effort, a lot of them can be.

The quest for making money online can seem never ending. If you haven’t made any yet, the struggle to do so continues. If you’ve already made some, you want to keep making more.

Running an online business or “eBusiness” if you will, is the path that many cash-seekers follow, and that path just went from a dirt trail to a paved road with the launch of the eBusiness Directory from WebProNews.

Unlike typical directories that serve mainly to provide sites a place to get links, this directory is here to serve the user. The user being an eBusiness professional as the WebProNews brand has always catered to.

The eBusiness Directory at directory.webpronews is a one-stop shop for resources that will help you run an online business more efficiently. It’s got software listings broken up into a variety of categories from accounting to ad serving, not to mention a listing of general free download sites for all kinds of software. It’s got listings for news sites in a variety of sub-niches, blogs, tools, and more covering just about everything aspect of online business.

This directory is a must-bookmark resource for anybody looking to make a career out of making money online.

By the way, it’s free for submission with no paid inclusion. Feedback is also encouraged.

Yesterday we discussed including URLs in your offline marketing efforts, such as print ads, but what if you used a different URL for different campaigns like Helen Leggatt at BizReport suggests?

This could help you determine which campaigns were more effective. Basically, it’s a way of tracking offline advertising to your site.

Once you figure out which campaigns are more effective, you can tweak your other campaigns to hopefully match the success of the ones that work well.

Before you know it, you may have more traffic than you can handle. So make sure you are set up to handle the load. But that’s another story all together.

Giving different URLs in different campaigns is also a good way to keep your ads fresh. Stress that you are not just directing them to the same page they’ve already seen. This is something different, and it may spark some curiosity about what you have in store at this different page. Like the Burger King ad that Leggatt mentions. They direct people to haveityourway.com, which is a different landing page than burgerking.com (although it redirects to bk.com, it is still a different page).

Want to make money online? Here’s an idea: advertise your URL offline. It seems so obvious, yet many are still not doing so. Print advertising can drive a good amount of traffic to your site if you include your URL and your URL is a memorable one.

In fact, recent research by the Magazine Publishers of America shows that ads that include a URL inspire about 3 times as much web traffic to the advertisers’ sites as ads that don’t include one.

Something to think about.

If you are strictly an online business, it may not have occurred to you to do much offline advertising (even if this is just in local publications), but eyeballs are eyeballs and you need all of them that you can get to achieve maximum success.

If you run a brick and mortar business and are looking to make some money online, promote your website everywhere you can. Not just in print advertising, but in any marketing material you use. Business cards, flyers, signs, posters, bags, etc.

The point is: get people to remember your site. It also helps if you give them a reason to go there, so make sure your site is worth visiting before you go to all of this promotion effort.

I believe this is a relatively new feature, and admittedly, I haven’t used it myself yet, but it seems like a way for brick and mortar businesses to potentially use the Internet to drive more business to their stores. And these businesses should be selling online too!

Google Maps has a feature now that allows users to submit photos of their location to be placed in the corresponding location on Google Maps. From the looks of it, photos can be uploaded via panoramio.com and submitted to Google.

Now I don’t know their criteria for inclusion, and I would suspect that it is somewhat strict, otherwise there would be a mess of pictures all over the map, and unfortunately panoramio.com is down for maintenance right now, so I can’t really even look into it further, but it may be something you want to keep your eye on.

Attracting eyeballs is always good for business, and this could be an invaluable tool for those seeking customers who use Google Maps to find local businesses. And I’m pretty sure a lot of people are doing so. I know I do frequently.

Looking to start an online business but just don’t know what to sell?

As I’ve said before, online shopping is all about convenience, so if you can find a product or a service that somehow makes the customers’ lives easier, than you are probably siting on a goldmine.

The best example that immediately comes to mind is Netflix. This company in my opinion is a Pioneer in convenience via online business and has basically changed the video rental industry for good it seems.

What did Netflix do? They built a business model that is soley based on convenience to the end-user. What is a more convenient way to rent movies than to have them delivered right to your door? Netflix (not to mention the imitators) saw that opportunity to make people’s lives easier and they jumped on it.

Not only did they see the convenience of delivering movies to the customers’ homes, they packaged the movies in self-addressed postage paid envelopes so customers don’t even have to pay shipping costs. What is another inconvenience for movie renters? Getting the movies back to the store on time to avoid late fees.

Netflix even went so far as to let customers keep the movies as long as they want with no late fees, and when they were done with them, they could simply drop them back into the mail rather than having to drive to some store.

I realize this almost sounds like a paid review for Netflix, but I assure you it’s not. It is just a testament to how well an online business that focuses on customer convenience can do.

So now it is your job to come up with the next idea that will make people’s lives easier. Easier said than done perhaps, but I suspect there are more ideas out there waiting to be thought up that once established will seem like they should’ve been obvious for years (just like Netflix). Good luck!

This post is for the business owners who have brick and mortar stores, but are looking to increase their business online.

It is not only more convenient for local customers to shop online rather than go to your store, selling your product through you website will open up all kinds of business opportunities by attracting customers from all over the world.

Operating an online version of your business could increase the amount of customers you have exponentially, particularly if you are in a narrower niche. What I mean by this is that if you sell horror movie-related items for example, the market for this type of item may not be huge in the area where you live, but when your merchandise is available online, horror movie fans all over the world who would love to buy what you have will have access to it, and your business is bound to skyrocket.

Don’t just build a site and expect that business to appear, though. It’s going to take plenty of online marketing on your part.

A recent survey has shown that most small business owners are planning on making significant investments in web design, SEO, and email marketing over the coming year.

This is just a sign that those running an online business are going to continue to see an increasing amount of competition.

This is of course, a good reason to do the same yourself, and if you’re already doing it all, then you’re ahead of the game.

But if you are already doing it, it’s a good time to evaluate how well you are doing it, and if need be to step up your efforts.

As far as design, find places online that will review your site. Get some honest feedback from unbiased people. If you just show your friends and family, they’re likely to tell you it’s good regardless.

As far as SEO, well, how well are you ranking for your targeted keywords? If not well enough, maybe you’re not targeting the right ones. What do you want people to search for to find you?

For email marketing, are you advertising in publications that appeal to your target market? The more targeted the publications, the better conversion rates you are likely to have.

Stay ahead of the game. Otherwise, the competition is going to scoop up all the customers.

Since we’re all about making money online here, this seems as good of place as any to mention this contest that ContestBeat is featuring from Shaded Relief.

The whole object of the contest is to help them monetize their site, and as a reward they are giving away the winner’s choice of a $500 Home Depot gift card or some free advertising.

Three runners up will also get $50 cash via PayPal.

It’s running until June 15th, so you have plenty of time to share ideas. This not only a chance to make some money online for yourself, but to share your own wisdom to help someone else do the same.

Good Luck!

One benefit to operating a business online as opposed to a brick and mortar store is that you can attract customers on a global scale. This is particularly beneficial to businesses that operate within narrow niches. Why? Because the narrower a niche is, the less people the business will appeal to within a fixed area. That is the beauty of being able to attract customers from around the world, because while there might only be a few people in say, Flemingsberg, KY that are interested in what you sell, there may be thousands or millions around the globe.

The store that resides on Main Street, Flemingsburg, KY, may fail whereas the online store offering the same products may thrive.

It is important however to brand yourself as the niche you truly are representing. Make sure you are not implying a broader appeal than you actually represent, because it is misleading, and nothing turns a customer off more than feeling deceived and having their time wasted. On the flipside, you should dominate the niche that you are in. Cover that niche as extensively as possible to overcome the competition, which is likely to be much more fierce online that it would be back on main street. But if you dominate, your competitors will be the ones worrying about fearing you.