The decision to build an online business is not without challenges. Like every other start-up business, you will have to deal with a lot of experimenting and troubleshooting to increase the rate of sales.

In online businesses, your primary goal is not to create a substantial and aesthetically pleasing website, but a website that will effectively transform your visitors into customers. Your website’s power to turn its visitors into customers is referred to as the website conversion rate.

As a business owner, you must be involved in constantly tweaking your website to improve your conversion rate.

The Principle of Input-Output

The idea of split web-page testing all starts with the principle of input-output in internet marketing. The input for online moneymaking is the traffic that your website gets. On the other hand, the output is the total number of sales that you get from the traffic (The output is also referred to as conversions).

For example, your website may be getting as much as 3,000 visits in a day. A quick visit to Alexa.com will show you how much traffic your website is getting, as well as how many sites are linking in to your site.

However, your website traffic is only half the battle. The other more important half, the conversions, tell you how much you’re earning from your traffic. For example, out of the 3,000 visits, 70 of them purchase the product you are selling. In order to improve your conversion, you have to know first how to calculate it.

To calculate your conversion rate, you should use this equation: Output/Input X 100 = %

In the example I gave, the conversion rate is 2.3%, a rate the can obviously be improved. But how do you even do this? This is where creating two versions of your website come in. This may sound like an insane waste of time, but let me walk you through how it works.

How Split Web-page Testing Works

Creating two versions of your website is the first step in split web-page testing, also known as A/B Split Testing. The old web page and the tweaked web page will comprise the two versions of the website.

Improve Your Conversion

To improve your conversion, split web-page testing involves dividing website visitors into two groups. One group will be directed to the old version, while the other group will be directed to the tweaked version of the website.

The tweaked version is an altered version of the original one and will contain slight variations of the original one. (The conversation rates for the two groups will be compared, with the version having the better conversion rate as the final choice for the website of your online business).

The point of split web-page testing is to find out which alterations will help to improve your conversion rate.

If the altered version ends up having an improved conversion rate, then you better stick with the alterations done on the tweaked version.

Split web-page testing is a continual process that involves tweaking different parts of a website to improve your conversion to the optimum level. In the simplest terms, it is used to identify which parts of your website work and which ones need to be changed to compel visitors to buy your product.

What You Should Start Tweaking

In creating the altered version of your original website, what exactly are the features that you should tweak in order to compare the conversion rate? Here are a few features you should consider:

1. The Page Header

Consider a two back-to-back websites where the headers of the two websites are different. Other than that, everything else is entirely the same. By splitting the traffic of the visitors into two, the you can detect which of the websites had the better conversion rate based on the appeal of the header alone.

2. Purchase / Join Button

Another tweak you can do is the purchase / join link. You can experiment with a fancy “Add to Cart” / “Join Us” button or a simple link. This may seem like a negligible difference, but you’ll never know how much it can improve your conversion unless you include this tweak in the split web-page testing.

3. Site Navigation

How the visitors can navigate through your website is another factor considered in improving your conversion. Navigating your website can be done by a drop-down menu, or a simple set of links to the left / right side or bottom of the website. The ease of navigation can also determine the visitor’s decision to purchase your product.

Running your online business while on vacation? Managing your manpower while you’re on the daily transport to and from your workstation? Sorting out your small company’s projects as you board on the next flight to Paris?

A few years ago, hardcore, career-oriented individuals would shudder at the thought of running your online business from anywhere but home.

That’s not the case anymore. Technology has again given us another reason to celebrate. After all, running your online business is now entirely possible anywhere you are, as long as you bring your laptop – be it a powerful notebook or an ultra-portable netbook.

Let me give you five tools that will help make your efforts at online business administration a breeze. Some of these are free, some are paid; in one way or another, one thing is sure: these are among the best tools that can help you increase your efficiency (and your profits, of course!) as you work away from your laptop.

Online Accounting: Intuit’s Quickbooks

Intuit’s Quickbooks provides a convenient solution to a problem you would pay somebody thousands just to solve: accounting. Even without any accounting experience, you can make accurate records of where every penny in your business goes, track the inventory of your products and payments made, and create and send invoices (There’s no need to create sheets and sheets of documents that can easily be misplaced).

Quickbooks is a portal that can contain all financial information about your small business. With its fast billing system, you can even create purchase orders and send them with its automatic tracking system. Other notable features include the Customer Center, where you can see customer trends, billing information and Industry Trends.

Time Tracking: Replicon’s Web Timesheet

Here’s a time tracking software that you can try for 30 days. With Replicon’s Web Timesheet, you can effectively track the attendance of your employees in your online business. This is especially important if you’re employees are working remotely from their own computers as well.

Replicon’s Web Timesheet integrates the different departments and create a user-friendly system sensitive to your corporate policies. There are also graphical reports that you can generate to get a quick overview of how your employees are performing.

You can also send e-mail notifications that will remind you of what you need to accomplish in your timesheet as-well-as what each employee has to accomplish for the day and how its progress can be tracked. Convenient, isn’t it?

Project Management: Wrike

Wrike is an award-winning project management software for many reasons. One of the top reasons is the capacity to manage multiple projects all in one workspace. In fact, there’s no limit to how many projects you can manage in Wrike.

Another reason is its Intelligent Email Engine, where you can easily seamlessly integrate your email communications among your members and make sure that every email is well received. The email system will also update concerned members whenever there are changes in certain projects.

Wrike’s Dynamic Timeline feature will also allow you to have a clear, bird’s eye view of what you need to accomplish – with all your current projects shown. (Its timeline feature also allows you to drag and drop tasks and fit it in a schedule).

Another unique feature is its real time integration with Wrike.com. This will allows users to create tasks and set deadlines by simply creating a Wave in Google.

Lastly, it will create tasks without requiring you to log in. Its smart system works automatically once a task is made. This will save you hours of time that you will otherwise spend on administrative tasks like sending reminders.

Another project management software that will allow you to control your finances, manage time sheets, and create projects is CreativePro Office. Because it’s completely free, you will save a lot without compromising project management.

Website Planning: Jumpchart

Creating your company website for your online business can be long, taxing, and unnerving. Believe me, I’ve been there! Thankfully, there’s an application that can help you communicate with your website designer to achieve the exact look you want for your website. That’s exactly what Jumpchart is for.

As a website planning tool, it will help you plan the look of your website. You can freely navigate, format, drag, drop, add pages and text, and play around with the best color schemes available. With the ease of control, you can always work on your website on your own and save on what you’re going to pay for a freelance website designer.

If you’re still going for the freelance web designing route, you can also place comments on each website page and plan the tasks ahead. You can even ask for multiple mockup pages and pick the best one that your freelancer has done. Once you are satisfied with how the website looks like, you can always export the website into CSS files and have it ready for the Internet. Its free version will offer you 1MB of storage.

Wiki/FTP: PBwiki

As you run your online business from your laptop, you are going to need a reliable file sharing system that will not only allow you to collaborate with other users but also transfer files from one employee to another. This is where PBwiki, a free wiki, will demonstrate its genius.

With this wiki, you can set access controls for each user. This will make sure that employees will only share and access as much as you allow them to. It’s also good for creating and updating versions of a certain project of your client.

Probably the most important part is its intuitiveness. If you and your employees are going to use it in the long term, they better understand exactly how it works. Once they log in to PBwiki, it will take no more than a few minutes to be familiar with its interface. Before you know it, they’re using this wiki system like a pro!

So a lot of your friends and relatives have been telling you that you take really good photos. Every time you hear that compliment, you always hear a suggestion or two about starting a career in photography.

You know that for a fact, but you’re just too afraid, maybe clueless, as to where to start. Being a freelance photographer is one thing you always hear – but what is it really about?

What’s great about freelance jobs is that you get to be your own boss. I know you’re tired of the boss that keeps on looking over your shoulder, making sure that every photograph is exactly as he envisioned it to be.

How about following your vision first and thinking about the profitability next? That’s exactly what freelance photography is all about.

Freelance photography itself is a vast ocean of opportunities. And, like any other oceans, you’ll be swimming with plenty of fish who are also trying their luck in the same career path. How do you separate yourself from them? How do you actually make money as a freelance photographer?

Before Anything Else, Build Your Portfolio

Without a portfolio to back up your claims, you can’t expect to clinch deals with clients or sell your photographs. You don’t have to look very far: you can start by sifting through your collection of photos.

As you build a portfolio, you don’t just randomly pick the prettiest and the best in the bunch. Keep in mind that your goal is to make a coherent portfolio that tells a story. It can be a collection of animal photographs that narrate the beauty of the animal kingdom in different species and angles.

If you don’t think your current pool of photographs tell a story just yet, then go out, see the world, and take snapshots of things, people, events that you feel passionate about. Allow your creativity to take over you.

Build a Website

Once you have a collection of photos, it’s time that you set up a website showcasing your talent. It’s something that’s already been done before. If you have no idea how to create a photography portfolio website, you can check out the more popular ones:

The two websites are very different, right?

That’s because each website has a specific theme that caters to its target audience. While the latter one appeals to couples looking for a freelance photographer to cover their wedding, the former is for people who are looking for photos with a dark tone about them.

This is where the artist in you comes in: there will always be someone out there willing to buy your photo, whatever its creative spin may be. The more different, the better.

“I’m a photographer, not a website wizard!” That concern can easily be addressed as building a website is much easier than you think.

Market Your Services Online

Getting your name out there sounds impossible at first, but your efforts will pay off if you have the talent to back yourself up. Marketing your services online is a lot different from marketing online products and other services.

It can be as easy as posting your photos in your social networking accounts, tagging a few friends, and letting them know that you are open for business. You can also display your work at galleries like www.deviantart.com. This will allow you to network with other aspiring and established freelance photographers and open opportunities up for you.

• Sell stock photos in different websites.

  You can also sell your stock photos online in different stock photo agencies. There are literally dozens of websites of this kind, all of which are looking for freelance photographers like you who are willing to sell their work to customers.

  A few photo agencies where you can sell your photos are iStockPhoto, PhotoStockPlus, Stockxpert.com, BigStockPhotos, and Crestock.

• Start covering events.

  Being a freelance photographer means having the liberty to choose which specialties you want to explore. You can offer contractual work with sports leagues and cover sporting events such as football and basketball games. You can also cover local events like concerts and parades, then upload your photographs in the Pro Photo Gallery.

So what are you waiting for? Start going for what you really want and be a freelance photographer!

Building a website can be more than confusing. You’ll have to make numerous decisions, and if you don’t have an education in web design, the situation becomes even more befuddling. How do you build a website? What steps should you follow?

Here, you will learn how to build a website by following the simple steps laid out below. Creating a website does not have to be full of hair-pulling frustration, it can actually be quite simple.

Step One – What’s Your Type?

The first thing that you’ll need to do is to determine what type of website you need. This will be determined by what sort of business you own, or what you hope to achieve with your website.

Build a Website - Under Construction

For instance, you can create a brochure website in a very short time, but these are not comprehensive websites, but rather are more akin to direct mail.

A catalog website is what you’ll need if you intend to offer a range of products/services to your customers.

If your website will be more informational in nature, then you’ll need to take that into account and use Wordpress or Blogger as your website content management system (CMS).

Step Two – Your Domain Name

You will need to have a domain name for your website, as well. This will be the “abcdefg.com” that your customers type in or click on through search engines to find your website.

Your domain name is important! When at all possible, you should make it the same as your company’s name. However, there are instances where this is not appropriate. Usually, when you try to keep your domain name as simple, memorable and short as possible.

You should also consider purchasing multiple domain names in .com, .biz, .info, .org, etc in order to keep your competition from getting them and to capitalize on visitor mistakes. Finally, consider registering misspelled variants of your domain name for the same reason.

Step Three – Website Hosting

Now that you know what sort of website you want, as well as what domain name you want, you’ll need to consider website hosting. Your webhost will be responsible for maintaining (and often for creating) your website.

When considering website hosting, you must consider the amount of uptime the host experiences. If they only experience 99% uptime, then you should find one with 99.5 or 99.9% uptime. Any downtime will result in lost profits, as your website will be inaccessible to your customers and in some occasions will harm your efforts to increase page rank.

Part of considering webhosts is the question of website design. Many of these webhosts offer website templates that can be used to get your site up and running quickly. While this might be a simple solution when you need to build a website fast, it is not always good for the long term.

It’s better to find a professional designer, or a webhost that offers professional design as well as hosting. Often, you can also find a webhost that gives you access to a building a website tutorial.

Step Four – Test, Test and Test Again

Once your website is just about ready to go live, you need to test every aspect of it. You need to ensure that all links work correctly (for seo and human visitors), that all graphics are displayed properly and that any interactive features are fully functional. If anything is not working correctly, you must repair it prior to going live.

One of the basic reasons why people are looking to start a home business is the recession. There are plenty of people who lost their jobs and finding another job turns out to be difficult. They prefer looking at the home business were they can get a chance to work from home with minimum investment. Some had already lost jobs and benefits after many years. When you see this happen every day, you really start to think – will this be me in 20 years?

To be a success in the work from home industry you must realize that although different in many ways, this is still a job. Running your own home business is still work. It’s not all fun and games just because you are the boss.

You are its President, manager, Secretary, Janitor and master of the skills necessary to do your own bookkeeping, tech support or finding a competent bookkeeper and computer technician etc. A solid know-how of QuickBooks, Microsoft Office and the Internet will make you more self-sufficient and cut down on professional services fees.

You must realize that in order for you too start a home business, you will need to have a source of income to continue your lifestyle as normal. That is why keeping your daytime job is vital. Starting your home business can done on a part-time basis.

Home business requires a high degree of motivation, self-discipline and organization.
You need to be realistic with your business plans and goals. Don’t expect to get rich over night because it will not happen, even though some people would like you to think it will. Setting goals can give you milestones to shoot for tangible rewards for achieving these goals.

Home Business Types

Basically, there are two kinds of business types you can create: selling a product or service you are providing yourself, or selling or promoting a product or service, which are not your very own.

In other words, you do not have to have this product in your possession, nor do you have to be the one to perform this service. You can be the one that brings a product or service to other people – explain about it, highlight the benefits of it and promote it. You can simply use other people’s products or services to make money for yourself.

Making a lot of money with your own work at home business is very possible but it will take time, hard work, dedication, and desire. Your marketing skills, business skills, computer skills and available time are among the many factors that will decide how long it takes you to reach a large profit from your business.

The Internet makes it very easy and inexpensive for people to start a home based business these days. There are thousands of legitimate, valid home based business opportunities out there. And, of course, there are a lot of scams to beware of. Some business opportunities will fill you full of hype and false promises of making a lot of money in a short amount of time. You can sort them out by some trial and error.

Ready for some home business tips?

Find a quiet spot to work – Set up your home office in a room with a door to keep intrusions to a minimum.

Organize your day – Create some sort of schedule-even if it’s artificial-to break up your day. Your schedule must be rigid, you must be driven to success, and you must not let your defeats get the best of you. Listen to those around you who have succeeded – they have already paid their dues in time and money so, doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel.

Find your field of interest – Whether you end up selling information, services, or hard goods, the one thing to keep in mind when starting a home based business is that you must love the subject, product, or service. Spend some time researching your business idea. Make sure there is truly enough of a market for your product or service.

Create a business plan – write a business plan. It is your roadmap to reaching your objectives. There are numerous articles on the Internet and in libraries that can assist you in developing your business plan as well as addressing the many other issues involved with starting and operating a business from home.

Creating a business plan is really quite simple. All you have to do is sit down and decide what you want your business to be and how to go about building it. The easiest way to do this is to make a list of your interests and skills.

Build A Professional Looking Site – Build a website you would do business with yourself. There are numerous websites on the Internet and many of them are very well designed. Make sure your website is as professional in appearance as your competition. You will be judged on the appearance of your site so make sure you don’t lose visitors because of a bad design.

You can search on the web for advertising help and tips. There are many out there. You can join a group of people that know something about it and get input from them.
Getting and maintaining a website is not as hard as you might think. There are many good companies that will help you get a website started. You can find templates you can use and easy instructions along with phone support.

Make an easy to use site – if a visitor to your website has to put any effort into finding the information he needs, you will lose visitors fast. Everything should be easily available with clear directions on how to get information about the service or product. All important information should be no more than one click away.

If you are selling your self, you are building a work at home business website so you can make money. In order to do that you must get your visitors to make purchases. Your site should have a direct link your best products and services listed in highly visible places.

You can also have A Newsletter Sign-Up – Having a form for people to sign up to a newsletter is a great way to build a list of customers. It’s also a great way to build trust and a strong following. Pack it full of great information, resources, freebies, and more. You will bring them back for more plus they just might tell all their friends about you.

Your Online Home Business – Final thoughts

Working for yourself is actually a lot harder work than working for others. You have to be strong and avoid going to the bed, TV or fridge. But if you can do that, you can make money with your online home business.

There are thousands of work at home jobs and home business opportunities on the Internet. To be honest, a lot of them are scams and schemes, so you have to be very careful when choosing any business opportunity. However, there are also many legitimate work at home jobs as well as home based business opportunities on the internet that can help you make money online.

You can see www.sitesell.com. A large percentage of the time someone labels a home based business opportunity a scam just because they didn’t get rich off of it in their first month.