This is the first of a series of articles describing various ways to succeed on the Internet with a home based business. There is no single way to make money online so we’ll be going through various approaches that have actually worked for various businesses.

In this article, we’ll be viewing a marketing-oriented approach, that does not include search engine optimization or other highly technical skills. I personally know of a website making somewhere near $100,000 per year that consists of only one page, the sales page, and receives about 6,000 - 7,000 visitors per month. So, let’s see what made this website a success.

First of all, this website is not an affiliates website. It markets it’s own product, an e-book. In fact, most of these hits come from the site’s own affiliates that drive visitors to the main site. Which means, that all of these visitors are highly targeted visitors that have actually visited an affiliate’s site, read the information and decided the wanted to buy, or just read more details about the product and clicked on the affiliate link.

Second, the site uses what is called a forced opt-in list. When someone first visits the page, they are asked to enter their e-mail address to receive a free report before they proceed to the main page of the site containing the promised information. It may seem annoying, but it’s a very effective way to build an opt-in list. They also automatically enroll members that bought the e-book to their opt-in list. The reason opt-in lists work well is the following. Let’s say that for every 100 visitors to the site, 3 people make a purchase. This does not necessarily mean that the other 97 people did not like your product. Maybe they needed more time to decide (and forgot all about your site during that time), or the were just searching for information and they hadn’t yet initiated the buying-decision process. If you could, however, you e-mail these 97 people a week later, and remind them about your site or ask if they’ve found what they were looking for, it’s HIGHLY possible that you will see some new sales! So that’s pretty much what opt-on lists are about. Squeezing every possible conversion (that is, convert a visitor to a buyer) from your visitors! Further more, if you decide to market additional products, related to the theme of your site (even if they’re not yours, but you act as an affiliate) you can use your opt-in list as a highly targeted customer base.

Finally, this site uses a recorded audio message in the sales page, to introduce the product to the visitors. I find these messages annoying and always turn them off when I visit such a site, but amazingly, this has increased sales by about 35%! It seems that what you or I may find annoying or innapropriate or ‘it’s not gonna work’ type of feature, some people find very useful and convincing! That’s one important point to remember when doing marketing.

So, there you have it. The secret to this site’s success was a great product (not original though, there are hundreds of similar e-books out there), an affiliate program, a clever way to build an opt-in list of highly qualified leads, a good sales page (similar to thousand of other sales pages out there) and some messages to forums to announce the site’s presence. No need for a PhD in Computer Science or anything like that.

I am not allowed to give out the address of this site, and as for subject of the e-book, well, it’s about fitness. Don’t think, however, that because your niche is different, you will not be able to do it. I only mentioned the site’s niche so that you know it’s not some extraordinary area with zero competition and thousands of rich people ready to buy anything that resembles a product.

Until the next article, take care and good luck!

James Hayes maintains a web page with information on how to Make Money with a Home Based Business at http://www.infocastportal.com/money