Web Presence

In order for people to find you online you have to make an effort to be found. Just because you have a web site or an email address doesn't mean people are going to rush to meet you. You have to enter the web communities that are of interest to you and are your target market. Perhaps the most basic and first one you should consider is Twitter.

Signing up on Twitter will allow you communicate in semi-real time with those whom you network with online. If you are not already tweeting (posting to your twitter profile) you're out of touch with the fastest growing form of social networking communication.

Twitter is a fast growing, leading edge form of online social networking that has a real time aspect that appeals to many. Tweets are short bursts of information from you to those who follow you. It is accessible from cell phones and via the internet, accepting 140 character messages, as you post them. In that 140 characters you can include URLs, which makes Twitter an incredibly powerful way to convey lot's of information about a topic of interest to a group of followers.

Twitter allows a person to follow the activities and share in the discoveries of friends and interesting people and organizations. Want to keep up to date with your favorite band member or policies in your corporation or your favorite tech gurus? Want to save time getting news out to friends and family members? Want to know what is coming to market soon or going on sale at your favorite stores? Twitter is the perfect tool for you.

Every time you, or anyone you follow, tweets, everyone in your network can see it. Networks of like minded people communicating worldwide in real time. Membership rose from 6 million to over 9 million between Jan and Feb of this year, and Google is in the final stages of negotiations to buy it. You can even set Twitter to post your tweets on your Facebook profile.

And speaking of Facebook, that's the next place you will want to set up a profile. Like Twitter it allows you to post things and your friends will see your posts, only on Facebook you can post pictures, videos, large blocks of text and much more, but still in a fairly rigid format.

Once you have signed up on Twitter and have set up a basic Facebook profile, complete with a photo or logo and information that will lead your followers to your main website, start doing research on what is working for others in your area of interest as far as getting their name and website in front of a lot of people.

On Twitter you will want to follow Mashable, who is currently one of the top social networking gurus. I have found his posts incredibly useful. Search who he follows and add those whose posts you find helpful. Soon others will begin to follow you. Tweet at least a couple of times a day and follow the suggestions you will find on what kind of things attract and hold followers.

Another good way to get noticed online is to sign up for a Technorati Profile.

Take advantage of the code various sites offer to cross promote yourself such as:
or by providing links to your various profiles:

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I read a lot every day. when I find something really cool, something that makes me say "WOW!", I tweet about it. You can track how well you are doing in Twitter by using a cool free service called Twitter Grader Following tips I found online I managed to take my grade on Twitter Graderfrom 64 to 70 in just a few hours.

Tweet, search for people to follow, build up your Facebook profile, and expand your knowledge of web page coding, particularly HTML. The process takes time, I suggest doing a little bit every day instead of trying to do it all at once.

Online income generation basics

1. Email account(s)
The first thing a person needs to do business online is an email account.

If you have an ISP (Internet Service Provider) they probably provide you with one or more email accounts, however as the internet changes and time passes odds are very high that you will change ISPs and therefore have to change your email, unless you select an online provider.

The more permanent your email, the more effective your marketing efforts will be, and the less you will have to redo with as changes occur. You may need only one account or several depending on the model you choose to follow for generating income. More about this further down.

Over the years I have used many, many free online email services and hands down Google mail (www.mail.google.com)blows all the rest out of the water.

I have had an account with them for several years. I virtually never experience spam, yet I have not had any problems with people or businesses that I want to have contact me succeeding, and they can handle whatever load may be placed on them, and they are as permanent a service as you can hope to find online. I use gmail as my primary provider, with a backup account at Yahoo.com, so if I were to forget my password, get hacked or have some other type of problem, I can recover quickly.

Selecting a name may be a little tricky, as millions of names have already been taken, but after a few minutes of trial and error you will find one that isn't taken that you can live with. The shorter the better, and making it easy to remember is advantageous but not absolutely necessary.

2. Paypal.
There are several online payment handling companies available. Frankly I have had only the most limited experience with most of them, mainly because Paypal has remained the pre-eminant funds management service since it's inception. They pay decent interest and in my experience are very like a bank that is designed for doing business online. I suggest you start with a personal account (as business accounts don't pay interest). You can always upgrade if you need to. They provide you with a wide range of services such as banners for your website, acceptance of major credit cards, echecks and other forms of payment. Their fees are very reasonable, and kick in mainly only when you receive money.

You will want to advance through their "verification" process as rapidly as possible, linking your Paypal account to your bank account and credit card so that you can easily transfer your funds in and out of your Paypal account.

3. Fulfillment
When someone orders something from you online someone has to take the order, pick and pack it, ship it, collect the funds and so forth. If you are focusing on a niche market you may be able to handle the entire process personally, however the internet is a world wide marketplace and if your advertising is effective and your product becomes popular, you could experience receiving hundreds or even thousands of orders per day, far more than one or even a dozen people could handle effectively.

If the name of the game for you is automated residual income you will need to carefully select a company or service to perform fulfillment for you or choose something that requires the least amount of effort possible to achieve fulfillment. Selling ebooks is a good example of a low fulfillment requirement business.

As Fulfillment companies go online, Amazon.com seems to be head and shoulders above the others I have seen. They have an excellent system for enabling you to effectively market just about anything and have exceptional fulfillment services available.

4. Presence
One of the more subtle aspects to success online is knowing how to build a web presence. It will be important for you to have at the very least; a MySpace profile, a Facebook profile, and a Twitter account. Use the same name and information for all and cross link them. To see what I mean go to my MySpace profile and follow the links to my other web presence pages.