LKPCS.com 22 Ways to Lose Money Online

Lizard King Computers

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22 Ways to Lose Money Online

If you are considering establishing a web presence, there's a lot of things you need to take into consideration. Below are 22 common traps that people fall into with Web Design, Hosting, and Marketing. We offer a FREE Consultations to help you avoid the pitfalls and be successful online.

1. "I want a web-site because everyone else has one or people keep telling me to get a web-site so I guess I'll just go ahead and do it?"

The quickest way to lose money, online or in any other effort, is to not have clear cut, measurable objectives. If you're going to establish a web presence for your company, you need to know what you expect it to do for you and how you will determine if it's successful or not.

2. "It's just a web-site. I don't want to spend a lot of money on it. I'm going to get my nephew to do it for me."

If this is you, stop where you are and forget about establishing a web-site for your business. Your web-site is the first impression, and often the only impression, someone will have of your company. You wouldn't hire some high school kid to build your house just because he takes a wood working class and says that he can build anything! Hire a professional. It will only save you money in the end. A lot of our business comes from people who have paid some kid or a relative to design their site. After awhile, the kid moves away, the relative is too busy and you're stuck with a pathetic site that doesn't work, needs to be changed, and is a thorn in your side.

3. "More traffic equals greater profits. Let's do "whatever it takes" to get more traffic to the site."

This is basically the pitch that every SEO company will sell you on. Their formula is like this: High Search Engine Rankings = More Traffic. And More Traffic = Greater Profits. If only it was that easy! Just because people visit your site does not mean that they will choose to buy from you. It's a combination of the Right Traffic, the Right Web Site, the Right Time, and the Right Offer. Anyone selling you a "quick and easy solution" is simply after your money.

4. "Who offers the cheapest web hosting?"

It's amazing how many people fall into this trap. Web hosting is foundation of your company. If you have a web-site, you can be guaranteed that someday you will need some type of technical support from your hosting company. Just think about it for a minute! Someone offering you hosting for $5 or $10 dollars a month is not making a lot of money. No one makes a lot of money in hosting. You want someone who understands your web-site and your company. You want a hosting company to "know who you are."

5. Hire an SEO Company that mentions search engines you've never heard of.

Have you ever talked to an SEO guy that talks about search engines you've never heard of and keeps mentioning hundred or thousands of search engines? Only a handful of search engines make up almost all of the Internet search traffic. Who cares if you're #1 in some obscure engine that only 2 or 3 people use every day. When the guy gets you ranked in all of these engines you've never heard of, he's completed his job. You paid for it, but get nothing out of it. If SEO people are not talking about MSN, Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Ask Jeeves or other engines you've heard of, look out!

6. Paying someone to submit you to hundreds or thousands of search engines.

This is simply a waste of money! Simply submitting your site into an index with 6 million other web pages doesn't do anything for you. You only benefit when your web-site appears in the top 20 of those 6 million pages. People who do this are just entering your URL into a program that tries to automatically submit to search engines. Most major search engines no longer accept automatic submissions.

7. "I don't need a shopping cart. People can just call me if they want to order something?"

The Internet is all about Convenience. You need to make it easy for people to buy from you. You must remember that when you set up shop online, your competing with other businesses around the globe. People do not have to do business with you. On the web, people do business with you because they want to not because they have to.

8. Buying software to install on your site, like a shopping cart, before knowing what Operating System is on your web server.

Most web servers use a version of Windows or Unix as their operating system. There are others, but most are Windows or Unix. Just like software for PC or MAC, software to run on your site must be compatible with the operating system. Find out all of the technical specs on your web server before you buy any software to install on it.

9. Paying for web design up front.

Just about every web design company requires 50% payment up front for web design. They do this to protect themselves, but we've met more people who were burned by web designers than vice versa. If you want them to integrate software such as a shopping cart, or other hard costs, you should be ready to pay for that portion, but paying up front for the design will usually lengthen the time until you get your site. We run into people all the time who have paid someone to develop their site and have yet to see anything two months later.

10. Not doing your "due diligence" to avoid and prevent credit card fraud.

If you have a merchant account and take orders online, be ever watchful for anything that appears out of the ordinary. If you process a credit card, which is stolen, and it goes through, you are liable for that charge. If you shipped the product or service before you find out that it was a stolen card, you lose twice because you will never get that merchandise back. We had a client who nearly lost $6,500 on an order involving a foreign order on a stolen credit card. Fortunately they were vigilant and noticed some irregularities in an order and spoke to their Merchant Bank before processing the card.

11. Who owns your web-site?

It's your web-site. You paid for it, but do you really own it? Web design companies can copyright their work and simply sell it to you. If they own the copyright, in essence they own your site. Make sure that you are the copyright owner of your web-site. Make sure that this is written into your agreement.

12. Who owns your domain name?

The "Administrative Contact" controls your domain name. The "Registrant" is the person who actually owns the domain. Did you buy your domain yourself or did your design or hosting company buy it for you? If someone else is going to buy it for you, make sure that they register you as the "Registrant" or owner of the domain. Make sure that this is written into your agreement.

13. Who owns your SEO work?

Many SEO companies own the work that YOU pay for! Just stop paying them and see how long it takes them to sell it to one of your competitors! Make sure that any SEO agreement you enter into specifically states that you own the work and have full license to it.

14. "Free for All" Link Exchanges.

This doesn't really cause you to lose money, but it will have an adverse effect upon search engine rankings. Free for All link pages or "Link Farms" do not promote Link Popularity for your site. In fact, they can even damage your site's "reputation" with major search engines such as Google.

15. Not getting an exact price quote in writing.

This should be obvious but it seems like when it comes to the Internet, people throw away their common sense! Whether it's web design, hosting, marketing, etc, get an exact price quote. If someone cannot tell you exactly what the cost will be, find someone else.

16. Pay more money for higher SEO rankings.

We've run across SEO companies who are constantly trying to "up sell" their clients. They have rankings for you somewhere on the third page of search results but tell you that if you send them some more money they can move you up higher. A lot of SEO companies establish some type of monthly retainer for their services. If they want more money, it should be for a new campaign using new keywords. If you've already paid a setup fee and are paying their retainer, they should provide you with the agreed upon results without needing more money.

17. Hiring an SEO company without a defined guarantee policy.

There are no guarantees with SEO! Just about every company out there says that they guarantee their work but what does that mean? A company cannot guarantee positions. It's difficult to find an SEO company with a defined guarantee that you can understand. Usually it is vague and leaves room for too much interpretation.

18. Hosting with a company that makes you pay for disk space and/or bandwidth.

Hosting can be much like your cell phone bill. They give you so much disk space and bandwidth (traffic), but if you go over the limit, they stick it to you with additional fees.

19. Hiring an SEO company and allowing them to pick your targeted keywords.

When you retain a SEO company, they should put together proposed list of keywords. You should review this list and make sure that each keyword is relevant to your business and your objectives for your web-site. If a word on the list does not seem relevant to you, ask them about it and find out why they included it. You hired them to be the professionals, but make sure you understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. In the end, any marketing campaign, be it SEO or anything else, must be inline with your objective.

20. Not making your SEO company stick to the contracted keyword list?

SEO companies are infatuated with rankings. Make sure that they are ranking the words that you agreed upon. They will probably pick up derivatives or other words that are not on the contract, but their main objective is to rank the specific keywords on your agreement. Often they will pick up rankings for less searched for derivatives or uncommon spellings of contracted keywords and expect you to pay for it. You agreed to pay for promotion of specific keywords. Make them stick to the agreement.

21. Not staying with your online marketing campaign long enough.

Everyone still has this idea of "quick money" with the Internet. It just isn't that way. After you start a SEO campaign or any combination of Intenet Marketing, stick with it for at least six months. A year is even better. We're not saying stick with it even if you're not seeing results. Make changes within the campaign, but do not just scrap the whole thing after a month or two. Work with your marketing company and troubleshoot the root problems and solve them. On the other side of the coin, if you realize that you're involved with some shady, fast talking sales person, cut your losses and get out.

22. Not being online!

If you're in business, you should have an Internet presence. Not having a web-site is like not having a telephone. You're cutting yourself off from potential customers. You might not sell anything online. You may not deal with the public, but people expect you to have a web-site. That is just the world we live in. Put up an effective, easy to use web-site with clear cut, identifiable and measurable objectives. If you don't, you're probably losing money!