SKY IS THE LIMIT...

One of the more practical and valuable features of using e-mail to market your business is using e-mail tracking reports to find out what your audience is doing with your e-mails after you send them.

Most E-Mail Service Providers (ESPs) can track your e-mails and allow you to view the results in an e-mail tracking report. E-mail tracking reports are analytical summaries of the results of a given e-mail campaign. Among the many interesting and insightful bits of information you can pick up from a report is your click-through rate.

Your click-through rate is the number of unique individuals who click on one or more links in your e-mail expressed as a percentage of total tracked opens. ESPs calculate click-through rate by taking the total number of unique individuals who click a link in your e-mail and dividing by the total number of tracked opens. Here are the steps for calculating click-through rate:

1. Take the total number of clicks on all links in the e-mail and subtract any multiple clicks attributed to a single subscriber to get total unique clicks.

For example, if your e-mail contains two links and ten people clicked both links or clicked the same link multiple times, subtract ten from the total number of clicks.

2. Take the total number of tracked opens and divide by the total number of unique clicks to get clicks per open.

For example, if 30 of your e-mails track as opened and you receive 3 unique clicks, your e-mail received 0.1 clicks per open.

3. Multiply clicks per open by 100 to get click-through rate.

For example, the click-through rate for 0.1 clicks per open is 10%.

Even if your audience clicks multiple times, your click-through rate represents only the number of unique individuals who click one or more links. Most e-mail tracking reports also allow you to view the total number of clicks attributed to each unique individual as well as showing you exactly which links are clicked. Average click-through rates vary widely by industry.

Diagnose the problem correctly

Check traffic statistics for user appeal

- Number of unique users

- Number of repeat visitors

- Numbers of sessions or visits

- Average time per page

- Average time par session

Review your design for user appeal

Take time to review your site with new eyes (concept, content, navigation, decoration and marketing efficacy).

Make site operation easy for users

Check page statistics

Use multiple techniques to build traffic

- Free info tools: signature blocks, blurbs, FAQs, Yahoo! groups

- Onsite techniques: Chat rooms, message boards, wikis, contents, games, coupons, surveys, free samples, event announcements, tell a friend

- Word of web online techniques: Blogs, What's new, hot sites, award site, online press releases, search engine optimization., inbound link campaigns, e-newsletters

- Paid on line advertising: PPC compaigns, newsletter sponsorships, banner ads.

- Offline advertising: Direct mail.

Check statistics for leads, sales, and conversions

Optimise your site for sales

- Use marketing's three letter word (YOU!)

- Require only two clicks two order.

- State customer policy clearly

- Use marketing's four letter word (FREE!)

Embrace the worms

Never stop working on your site

Everybody wants more money, right? It's practically a national pastime here in the United States. Companies want to expand their profits, and the folks at home could always use a few extra bucks to pay off the mortgage, buy the RV of their dreams, or take off for one of those sparsely populated islands in the South Seas. You already know about making money by selling things on eBay, but what if you could enhance your bank account by not selling things?

No, it's not some kind of weird government program where you get paid for sitting around. The eBay Affiliate Program is a plan by which eBay pays you to help it get new members and drive traffic to other people's auctions.

It might sound strange at first blush, but think about this for a moment. You don't handle any products, you don't answer any e-mails, you don't pay for any auctions, and you never worry about when the next 18 cubic feet of packing peanuts might arrive. Instead, you spend time doing what you love: building Web pages, developing keyword campaigns, and creating amazing new eBay API systems. And if you do it right, you make money — potentially lots of money.

Before you go into some kind of multilevel marketing imagine the possibilities hyperventilation attack, check out these clarifying details about the eBay Affiliate Program:

• It takes work. Lots of work. You need to research eBay buying patterns (eBay provides you with lots of monthly information for free), find ways to reach the target buying audience, and create content that turns window-shoppers into bidders, buyers, and active eBay participants.

• The potential looks stunning, but nobody gives you any guarantees. You might put in a lot of work but get nothing serious back from it. Heck, you might put in months of work with no payday. Then again, with the help of eBay's various affiliate tools and best practices ideas, you might strike a mother lode. It all depends on how much you want to put into it and how cleverly you approach the problem.

Joining the Affiliate Program costs nothing at the standard level. If you decide to join the Affiliate API program (for people and companies who plan to develop their own online applications that drive business to eBay), you pay a $250 start-up cost, plus some possible extra fees if your application makes too many API calls without generating enough bids. (Read the Affiliate API Membership terms agreement very carefully if you plan to give affiliate application development a try.)

The Affiliate Program does have one important limitation: You can't promote your own auctions through Affiliate Program links. Sorry, that just won't do. Because you already make money (at least hopefully) from selling stuff, you can't double dip by getting an affiliate bonus as well. (But you do get bonus points for creative thinking. Good job.)

eBay pays for two things: new members and bids or Buy It Now purchases. You get the most money for bringing a new member into the system, but you get the payoff only if the person comes to eBay directly through one of your affiliate links and makes a bid or Buy It Now purchase within the first 30 days after signing up. In that case, you get between $10 and $20 for your efforts, depending on how many people sign up through your links that month. If a current member goes through one of your links and places a bid or uses a Buy It Now link, eBay tosses between a dime and a quarter into your affiliate account, again depending on your total production for the month.

Like many performance-based programs, you make more money as you generate more business. Both the active registration and the monthly bid/BIN payment systems use a tiered system based on your total activity for the month, so more production means higher payments for every one of your affiliate link hits.

To get started in the Affiliate Program, you need a regular eBay user ID (no surprises there). To sign up for the program, follow these steps:

1. Start with a visit to Join the Program.

The Join the Program page outlines the steps involved in joining the affiliates program. Read over the information so you understand what's going to happen and then go on to the next step.

For an overview of the program itself, visit the main Affiliate Program site. It includes links leading to details on program payments, current success stories, and lots of tips for increasing your profits and building a strong affiliate business.

2. Click the Join Now link to start walking through the sign-up process.

That link takes you to Commission Junction, eBay's affiliate system partner. Commission Junction handles the details of tracking and counting clicks and disbursing money to program members.

You must join Commission Junction in order to play in eBay's affiliate pool.

3. It takes a few minutes to wade through all the Commission Junction signup forms, but eventually you emerge from the other side.

A few minutes after completing the process, your new affiliate package arrives via e-mail. That's it — you can start doing your affiliate thing!

At this point, spend some serious time getting to know the Affiliate Toolbox as well as the Best Practices section. You need to know your options in both areas before getting too far into planning your affiliate business.

If you think PayPal is just for eBay sales, then you're missing out on a great opportunity to get revenue (or more revenue) from your Web site. If you're not already selling products from your Web site, adding Buy Now buttons or the PayPal Shopping Cart is the easiest way to turn a marketing site into an e-commerce site. If you're already accepting credit card payments, then offering PayPal as an additional payment option widens your customer base because people who don't want to use a credit card can still make purchases.

PayPal is the easiest way to add e-commerce to your Web site

If you don't know how to code, but you're comfortable using FrontPage to create a Web site, you can integrate e-commerce quickly and easily with PayPal's free tools for Microsoft FrontPage. These tools let you add Buy Now buttons, a Shopping Cart, or set up subscriptions and recurring payments while you're designing with FrontPage.

You don't need to apply for a merchant license

In order to sell and accept credit cards online, you normally need to work with a credit card processing company or bank. The role of the processor is to validate buyer's credit cards at the time of purchase. Credit card processors help prevent you from fraud by checking whether the buyer's credit card is valid, and blocking IP addresses, e-mail addresses, or names of known problem buyers. Additionally, the processor can block a payment that sends the user over their credit limit.

You get a lot of peace of mind when working with a processor, but the application process can be a pain. (You need to provide a lot of information about your company, have a business bank account, and so on.) After the processing company approves you, you need to set up your Web site to accept secure payments and to configure your e-commerce software to send payment data to your processor's payment gateway. To work with a credit card processor, you spend a lot of time and resources before selling your first item.

PayPal also lets you accept secure payments, even credit card purchases, but the application process is as easy as providing your country, name, address, home telephone number, and e-mail address, and accepting the PayPal User Agreement. You can decide to open an e-commerce shop in the morning and start accepting payments in the afternoon.

You can specify payment preferences

If you accept PayPal payments, you can set up your Payment Receiving Preferences to block certain types of buyers. You can decide not to sell internationally or to block purchases from buyers who have not confirmed their address. This adds another layer of protection for you as the seller. Additionally, you can decide to accept payments only if they are made in a specific currency, and you can block buyers who try to purchase with a credit card when they have a bank account linked to their credit account.

In addition to deciding whether to block certain types of buyers, you can easily change your credit card company name (the one that is shown on the buyer's credit card statement).

The buttons are free

Most credit card companies charge you a monthly fee, even if you don't receive any payments. Adding PayPal e-commerce buttons to a Web site costs you nothing — if you don't sell anything, you don't pay. When you do sell an item, you pay $0.30 for each transaction, plus 2.9 percent of the selling price. The percentage can drop as low as 1.9 percent, depending upon your monthly volume of sales.

Easy encryption

When you want to set up a secure e-commerce Web site, there are a number of steps you must take. First, you need to apply for an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) license. SSL is a protocol used to send secure data over the Internet. SSL encrypts data that is sent from the browser; the data is decrypted when it gets to the server. After you implement SSL, you need to build an e-commerce Web site that works with SSL to transmit data securely (usually to a credit card processor).

Compare this to the ease of encrypting buttons with PayPal! When creating a button with the Button Factory, all you have to do is click the Yes option to have your button's code encrypted. When you copy the encrypted code to your Web site page, snooping eyes won't be able to see any personalized information by viewing the source code for the Web page.

Setting up subscription payments is easy

PayPal makes it easy to set up subscriptions and recurring payments and frees you from the hassle of sending out periodic invoices. When you set up your subscription, you can specify up to two trial periods (for example, the subscriber can be billed $0.00 for the first month, and $20 for every month after the trial period has ended). You can set your billing cycle to be days, weeks, months, or even years.

You have the option of setting up recurring payments, in which the buyer pays the specified amount every month, without end. You can also set up payment installments; for example, you can charge the buyer $20 for five installments to purchase a $100 product.

Finally, PayPal can generate unique username and password combinations if you want to give buyers access to "members-only" content, stored in a special folder of your Web site.

No setup fees

Usually setting up an online store involves some type of setup fee — either you have to pay for the price of the e-commerce software, a setup fee if you're using an online service, or you have to pay a developer to write custom code. Not with PayPal. . . . You have no upfront fees to open an online store if you use the PayPal Buy Now buttons or the Paypal Shopping Cart. With PayPal, you don't pay a thing until you actually sell something!

Detailed transaction data

When you use PayPal for e-commerce transactions, you can use the PayPal History Reporting Tools to download and analyze detailed information about every sale made. You have the option of including Shopping Cart details in the report. You can also do an advanced search to find transactions linked to an e-mail address, transaction ID, buyer's name, receipt ID, or item number. You can import the downloaded file into Excel, Quicken, or QuickBooks for additional tracking and analysis. You can also look at summary information available from the Merchant Sales Report.

Promotion through PayPal shops

If you accept PayPal payments on your Web site, you can enroll your online store in PayPal Shops, a directory of Web sites that accept PayPal. After you enroll, PayPal members can search for the products and services you sell.

There is no cost to list your site with PayPal Shops, but you do need to have a Premier or Business PayPal account. Additionally, you need a bank account and credit card linked to your PayPal account and you need to invest in the PayPal Money Market Fund. To enroll in the fund, you need to provide a social security number or an employer identification number.

When it gets right down to it, what you really want to know is how you can make sure your business succeeds at e-commerce. Getting the e-commerce end of your business off the ground isn't a walk in the park, but it's also not as difficult as you may think — as long as you're using your head.

Test for success

Internet customers are fickle critters. If they get a glimpse of your site before it's totally ready for prime time, they may decide that you don't know what you're doing and never come back. Don't put new pages, new features, new navigation tools — new anything — live on your site until you've tested it again and again. Test it yourself and get your dad and your sister to test it. You'll still find problems, of course, when the public gets its hands on it, but you hope those problems will be sporadic.

Hook 'em

No bricks-and-mortar anchor store is generating traffic for you on the Internet. If you want your e-commerce business to become a success, your site has to become a destination, a virtual place where people come for specific reasons. You have to hook your customers; give them reasons to keep coming back to your site repeatedly. Use advertising, loyalty programs, value-added material (such as an online magazine), and other tricks to reel'em in and keep'em. If you come up with a strong value proposition and flaunt it with your marketing, you will attract and retain customers.

Businesses need a lot of care and feeding when they're young, and e-commerce businesses are no exception (even new e-commerce ventures created by 100-year-old companies). You need to build an engaging site that customers want to shop at again and again. Most importantly, you need to build a name that customers recognize.

To build a name, you have to create a strategic marketing plan, which means you have to spend money. However, a marketing plan doesn't mean a whole lot if you put yourself out of business in the process of creating it.

Be careful — people may like you!

Make sure that you build your business — and that's the whole business, not just your Web site — to handle your success. Not only do you need to buy servers and software, but you also may need to develop your shipping department, your accounting systems, and your order processes.

Consider working in phases. Plan to reach a lofty goal, but implement only what you can handle. Here are some tips to help you grow incrementally:

• Lease and don't buy until you can afford it.

• Use e-service providers' inventory and Internet services until you can build your own.

• Promise only what you can deliver and deliver everything you promise.

• Buy what you can now and build the business so that you can easily add more to it later. Moreover, be prepared to add it quickly.

• Make sure that your distributors and other business partners know how successful you plan to be, and make sure that their businesses can handle the load you plan to dump on them.

Calculate Internet time

Get used to thinking in Internet time. If something goes wrong, calculate how much time you think it will take to fix it. Okay, now divide that number by five to see how much Internet time you have. Because things can change so rapidly on the Internet, you need to keep ahead of the curve in a wide variety of areas:

• Keep ahead of what your competitors are doing and how they use the Internet to challenge your market position.

• Stay on top of new technologies that can help your Web site work more effectively or that can give your organization a market edge.

• Continuously look for new areas of process improvement and ways to use your Internet investment to lower costs and increase profits.

• Watch for emerging standards that can help you connect to and cooperate with new customers or improve relationships with existing customers in your supply chain.

• Keep the site fresh and interesting so customers keep coming back.

Get to know your neighbors (and their neighbors, too)

Your neighbors, of course, are the other businesses in the supply chain. You buy your stuff from somebody, who buys the stuff from somebody else, and so on, and so on. It's not enough to just check with your distributor to make sure that he can ship fast enough to keep you supplied with enough products to meet your anticipated sales volume. You should find out about the company he buys from, too. Can his supplier meet your demands? What about the supplier's supplier? And the manufacturer?

Here are some simple indicators:

• Look at lead times. If things are stretching out, a reason exists, and you need to know what it is.

• If prices plummet, find out why. No one has a fire sale without a fire.

• If one of your partners is missing scheduled deliveries, or if its customers are looking for new vendors, you found smoke. Ask for references from several existing customers and discover if they are satisfied customers.

• Find out how long partners' employees have been with the company, especially senior management. Unstable workforces usually translate into unstable businesses.

Use the Internet to save money, too

At its heart, e-commerce is about using the Internet to make money. However, don't forget about the ways e-commerce technologies can save your business cash, too. After all, saving money is almost the same thing as actually earning it. Here are some ideas to make the Internet work for your whole business:

• Use Internet-based e-mail systems to reduce or eliminate the need to maintain your own e-mail system.

• Reduce travel costs with videoconferencing.

• Reduce HR costs by replacing paper forms with HTML forms that talk right to your databases.

• Get into B2B (business-to-business) e-commerce to procure business supplies.

• Use online auctions to purchase office furniture for lots less than retail.