When you start an online business, it is easy to forget that you are online for one reason and one reason only, and that is to own a successful business. All too often people make the mistake of thinking an online business is not a legitimate business because they cannot see the mechanics of how everything works. Make sure you are doing all of the following to give your business the killer edge.

1. Do you always follow up the sale with your customer? I know how special I feel when I do business with someone and they send me a personalised thank you email. It also gives you an opportunity to include a special promotion, or advertisement for other product lines your customer may be interested in.

2. Test and measure a referral scheme with your customers start a reward scheme based on something like a full refund of their purchase when they refer four customers to your site. Obviously work out your own profit and loss figures on how many customers you would require to achieve a profitable result. Remember that this process increases your sales.

3. Learn that just by selling the reprint or reproduction rights to your products you can include links, advertisements within the products you are selling to increase your back end orders.

4. When you ship an order, always remember to include a thank you note, and a money off coupon or something similar for your customers next purchase. Think about the theme of everything you do to create a stronger brand, this will build trust and help the customer choose you again for their next purchase.

5. Try the well tested upsell tips from the people at Amazon and Ebay and show related products for you customers on your order page. Let them know about a few products related to their selected purchase and try to entice them to up their order value when they have their credit card in their hand ready to buy.

6. Learn how to use other businesses to double or even triple your sales by cross promoting your product with theirs. Think about the natural link between people who are looking to remodel a kitchen, they will not just be looking for cabinets and counter tops; they will also be looking for accessories. Look for natural links with other businesses.

7. Create a product catalogue to send with each customer purchase. If you make the whole process of buying from you a special one, by going the extra mile, you will have a great opportunity to present your customer with more of the same, therefore increasing the lifetime value of your customer.

8. Most importantly, never forget the free stuff. You can quickly and easily use the internet to produce caps, t-shirts, stickers, key chains, teddy bears and mouse mats all stamped with your web address, or service information. If you have ever ordered printer ink and found a sticker in the order to put on your printer, you would be amazed at how successful the process of reordering ink becomes an automatic process.

Diane Cossie has decided to stop waiting for her ship to come in and decided to swim out to meet it. She has continues her passive income march to financial freedom with her primary business Carbon Copy Pro. For more information about the opportunity visit: http://www.dianecossie-carboncopypro.com

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.