Four Foundations of Success	Visited: 1931 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Jim Kelley June 17, 2003

Have you ever wondered why some people struggle to make money in their online business while others prosper from the very beginning?

Success on the Internet is not a matter of good luck, being born under a lucky star or having a rich father. Success on the Internet comes when we follow proven principles that have stood the test of time.

Over the years four key areas have been identified as critical to online success. Get these right and success will follow, sometimes very quickly. Get them wrong and even working 100 hours a week won't help you much.

Here now are the four foundations of success.

1. Knowledge. The number of people who have come online hoping they could join a "program", pay their $20 a month and be successful could fill a few hundred football stadiums. The number of people who have succeeded using this method can be counted on one hand.

The bottom line to success in any business is knowledge. Knowledge is power.

While you don't need to become the world's leading marketing expert in order to market successfully, you do need to have a basic understanding of the key concepts and tools you will use in order to succeed.

If you don't know what an autoresponder is, what HTML stands for, what it means to process credit card orders in 'real time' you may want to take some time to nail down the basics before spending your hard earned money.

2. Products. This may sound like a "no-brainer" but you must sell products and services that people want. The good news is that people love to buy things online. Buying online is fun. It's convenient. And people do it every year to the
tune of billions of dollars.

The key to success is to offer a product or service that either helps someone save time, save money or helps them make money.

Even purely informational sites, like search engines, are popular because they save people time. While these sites don't sell a product directly, their income comes from the many ads they sell on their site.

No matter what product or service you choose to sell online, be sure to write the information that goes on your website in such a way that people will see how they save time, save money or make money.

3. Automation. Automation is simply a fancy way of saying "Let the computer do the work for you". A great example of automation is an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a program you use to send the same response to everyone who asks for a certain type of information. Instead of typing the email yourself, the program responds for you.

You can use automation to process payments for your products, send our your sales letter, do your advertising, ask for referrals from happy customers and much more.

4. Advertising. At its core the Internet is one giant marketplace. The vast majority of people who sign on do so in order to buy something. This means you will need to advertise in order to succeed.

While you don't need a college degree in advertising, you will need to acquaint yourself with the basics of advertising. It will be important to know about classified ads, banners, direct email, ezines, sales letters and more.

Success on the Internet is not rocket science. It just takes some basic knowledge and a burning desire to succeed. If you offer a great product or service, learn to advertise it well, automate the tasks you can in order to save time and don't give up success will soon be yours.