When someone gets on the internet for the very first time, and they want to earn money in their spare time, they have a lot of questions they will want to ask.

I will seek to answer those questions here, as well as to provide a Day Planner to enable the new online entrepreneur to navigate the maze of building a successful online business.

When I find great advice by other writers, I will include that information as well. --- Clinton Douglas IV, Founder of Vasrue.com

Monday, November 5, 2007

DAY TWO - Do Your Due Diligence

Once you have figured out what you are going to do online, you need to figure out how you are going to do it. But, in order to know how you are going to do it, you first need to understand who your competitors are and how they are doing it.

Let's say you are getting into an informational site on home improvement.

Your first step should be to open up a document for your notes, and then to jet yourself first to
By using the search engines, you need to look at the keywords (search words) that best represent the purpose of your website and what the top 20 websites, on each search engine, are doing about it and how they are making their money. Take plenty of notes.

While you are doing your comparison, there are a few things you want to look for on those sites:
  • How much info do they have on their site?
  • What advertising networks do they host on their site?
  • Do they sell direct advertising? If so, at how much?
  • Do they sell their own products? Ebooks? Information packages? Services?
  • Do they give any indication on their advertising sales pages as to the amount of traffic they serve?
  • Do they have articles on their site from other writers at other websites?
  • Is all of their content, their own content?
  • Do they have a forum? Classified Ads?
  • Do they have a phone number on site? Live chat?
  • Do they feature video? PDF files? Other information channels?
  • Is their site attractive? Easy to navigate?
  • What is the best thing about their website?
  • What is the worst thing about their website?
  • How would you improve upon what they are offering?
Now, do this questionnaire on each of the top 20 listings for both google and yahoo, for all of the search terms that you deem relevant to your proposed website.

Once the research phase is completed, then sit down with a pen and paper and brainstorm what your perfect website would have. This first draft should include everything under the perfect scenario that you think a successful site would have.

While in our Day Planner, this is a Day Two scenario, the actual work may take several days to complete. That is okay. The more information you have, the more useful the exercise will be for you.

The next step will be Day Three.
Posted by at