How to Start an Internet Business: What Is Google Analytics?

One of the greatest challenges in any online business is how to translate traffic and even clicks into actionable information. Unless you’re using a very costly application, you won’t have any data on what pages your Internet users are visiting, how long they spend on the page, how often they visit your website, or even how to increase your traffic, isn’t that impressive?

These, however, are things of the past. Today you already have Google Analytics. This is a code you embed on your webpage to monitor and translate kicks into useful information. It’s been used by thousands of business owners, even the big ones, for the following reasons:

It is for free. A lot of people are surprised on how powerful the software is, despite the fact it doesn’t cost a single cent. All you have to do is to set up a Google account. If you already have a Gmail account, you can use that to sign in. Then you create a code and embed it in your webpage to collect data and report to you.

It is powered by Google. One of the greatest strengths of Google is its security. So far, we haven’t heard of any news about information breach. Moreover, it’s a company that seeks to improve its products every time. You cannot expect Google Analytics to be 100 percent perfect, but you can be sure major issues are addressed and fixed.

You can properly track your revenue. If you don’t want to waste money on stock management systems, then you’re better off with Google Analytics. The software has the ability to track all types of orders, online and offline. You can also organize your revenues by channels, categories, and keywords. Best of all, you can determine your conversion rate by comparing your purchases to unique website visits. The software also generates the bounce rate, which is a percentage of people leaving the website immediately.

You can generate sales reports. Google Analytics makes sure you’re always in the loop with the status of your online business. And if you don’t have the time to take a look at your stats online, you could simply generate sales reports and print them out.

You can spot errors and change them before they cause a huge damage. If your website is not driving enough traffic, the culprit may be broken or inactive links. Google Analytics can be used to determine what these links are, so you can immediately fix them. 

How to Start an Online Business with No Money and Help

If you’re into the brick-and-mortar business world, opening even a mom-and-pop without any money and help is close to impossible. You’re going to need a physical space, some people to run your business, marketing materials to display and give away, and of course, goods to sell.

It’s a totally different thing when you’re in cyberspace. If you’ll do your research on success stories, you’ll discover that at least 30 percent of them didn’t have the above-mentioned resources when they took the big leap—yet they’ve made it. What are their secrets? Let’s uncover them today:

Firm Decision: The first thing they do wasn’t really to build a website or earn XX profits. They simply changed their mind-set and came up with a very firm decision: they’re going to do everything to succeed in the business.

Offer: What will be your goods? They can be services or products. If it’s the latter, then you can take a look at yourself and determine if you can convert your talent, skill, or passion to money. For instance, if you’re good at Adobe Photoshop, you can work as a photo editor. If you’re selling products, you can be an affiliate marketer or a drop-shipper. Either way, it doesn’t require you to maintain an inventory. Their respective manufacturers will take care of that.

Webpage: We could see you raising your eyebrows. Seriously, how can you have a webpage if you don’t have enough money? Well, you can always begin with a blog. One of the best platforms out there is Wordpress. It’s so friendly to search engines that it offers a variety of plug-ins, and it’s easy to build your pages with it. There are also wonderful widgets that can help you share your different social networking accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Social Networking Sites: We’ve already mentioned two of the solid ones. Facebook, in fact, is becoming so notorious among online businesses they are overtaking Google in terms of ad placements. In Facebook, you can set up your own business fan page and allow leads to follow you. It’s the same thing in that regards with Twitter.

Videos: More and more people are sharing videos than photos because they are very dynamic. Coming up with your own videos doesn’t have to mean spending money. You can even make use of your handy camera to record. You just have to be oozing with creativity and ingenuity to garner the interest of your targeted market.

Five Productivity Tools You Can Use in Gmail

If you’re running an online business, an e-mail account is an important as air is to humans. It is one of the essentials and you can’t function online without it. How else can you communicate with your customers? Today you have several e-mail services to choose from. If your web host is kind enough, it may also provide you with your own. But some of these services are simply cut out to help people like you, who are looking for ways to reduce costs while being able to   effectively   manage your business. One of these is Gmail.

Ever since it was launched, Gmail has attracted millions of members all over the world. Besides being the brainchild of the all mighty Google, it also offers unlimited storage that you don’t even have to throw away any e-mail. Moreover, it’s packed with productivity tools you can use:

Signature: There are just so many things about your business you couldn’t talk about in your messages and definitely cannot include in your subject line. So you put them in your signature instead. You can use the space to promote your other contact details, such as your mobile phone and even home office address. You can also put up a website link. If you’re using Wisestamp, which allows you to customize signatures, you can integrate that into your Gmail account as well.  

Calendar: Gmail’s calendar is probably one of the most organized and efficient productivity tools available online. Besides being able to schedule all your appointments and activities, you can also share them with your team. You can also set up an alarm for each and every one so that you will surely be reminded before hand. Moreover, the calendar can also be displayed right in your inbox.

Documents: Collaboration has never been so easy with Gmail. Word processor and spreadsheet, among others, are very much like those you normally use on your desktop or laptop. You can also upload and download your Gmail documents, as well as grant permission to others to view them.

Groups: Are you constantly looking for the best ways to coordinate with all your staff? You can set up groups, where you can upload files, share images, and initiate discussions.

Domain: So your online business will look more professional, you can choose to create your own domain using Gmail. You simply need to go to Google Apps. There’s no need to set up anything in order to forward e-mails to your Gmail. You’re still using the same e-mail service, except that it appears as a company or corporate e-mail to the recipient.

Market Your Online Business at No Cost with These Strategies

Anyone who says that you can open and maintain an online business without any cost may have never set up one in his entire life. It is just like any brick-and-mortar enterprise. You have to shell out some money for investment. You can buy it to purchase equipment such as printers and mobile phones, even to buy a web host and domain so you can create your web store.

But that does not mean you have to be spending money at it all the time. Perhaps one of the glorious things about doing business in cyberspace is that there are tools and techniques that do not require moolah:

Advertise your business on Facebook. This social networking website is the largest in the world. Today, it has a membership of millions, and the number continues to rise every day. If you want to get a glimpse of planet Earth, this is where you should go. Somehow, too, Facebook is friendly to businesses as you can set up your own fan page. There you can shamelessly plug your products and services, and you don’t have to feel guilty. Facebook members have the option to add you so they can stay posted of any updates.

Use Twitter. It seems like these days that Facebook and Twitter are interdependent and go hand-in-hand. The two mesh together so well, that you can integrate your Twitter account to that of your Facebook. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, so you can add, share links, photos, and videos to all those who are “following you.” It’s the easiest way to keep the world up-to-date on what’s going-on in your business. It’s the electronic method of word of mouth.

Set up a blog. Despite the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, many still use blogs for the simple reason they are more comprehensive and offer a whole lot of features not found in the social networking websites.

Create a video. If it were not for video-sharing websites such as YouTube, the teens will never know about Justin Bieber. In the business front, one of the best success stories is Blendtec. Because of its “Will It Blend?” campaign, the company is able to boost its income to several million dollars, gain a huge following, and come up with other merchandise including a shirt dedicated to the main guy- Tom Dickson. As long as you have a good story line and decent-enough video recording device, you’re good to go.