How to Create a Money Magnet E-commerce Web Site

If you've been online for more than a day you've probably
heard some "guru" somewhere recommend that you create a
Money Magnet Web Site - a site that is highly automated and
helps you make money 24 hours a day. While that might
*sound* great, what they often forget to tell you is HOW to
do that.

Well, I'm going to tell you right now, in this article!

First, what IS a Money Magnet Web Site? A Money Magnet Web
Site can be defined as one that is equipped with an
integrated suite of both e-commerce and internet marketing
tools in a fashion that will allow you to be the most
profitable with the least amount of effort.

Most e-commerce systems are equipped with the following
essentials:

- A shopping cart.
- Acceptance and processing of credit cards.
- A maintenance system that allows you to add/change products.
- An order-retrieval system that enables you to fulfill orders.

However, what most of them are lacking are marketing tools.
There are several marketing strategies that are essential in the
creation of a successful e-commerce web site:

- Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers
- Effective use of autoresponders (generate automatic email
messages)
- Online Newsletter
- Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect's email address
- Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product)
- Advertisement (Ad) Tracking
- Back End Sales
- Affiliate program

Now, if you had a system that would support the integration of
ALL of these marketing tools in addition to the necessary
e-commerce essentials, then you would have a Money Magnet Web
Site. After all, it has been shown that it often takes 7 or
more ad exposures before prospective customers actually make a
purchase. Consider the following scenario:

A prospect clicks on an advertisement in an online magazine.
This action increments a counter for this particular ad to
help you determine how well it’s working. They don’t decide
to buy as of yet but join your newsletter. They are now
considered a prospect. You begin to send them a monthly
email newsletter. Additionally, an autoresponder kicks in
to thank them for joining the newsletter as well as
scheduling them to get email twice a month for the next 90
days reiterating your product benefits and inviting them to
purchase.

Upon sending them one of your "juicy" offers that they
couldn't refuse, they finally purchase. They will
automatically be removed from your prospect list and added
to your customer list.

Based on the particular product or service they’ve
purchased, they will receive a series of emails every two
weeks for the next 6 months offering complementary products.
This will be the engine that will drive your back end sales
and keep your customers coming back to your web site.

Being able to play out a scenario such as this using one
integrated system would be pretty impressive don’t you think?
The internet big boys do this with expensive e-commerce platform
suites produced by vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.
Having your system automatically perform these follow up tasks
frees you up to spend more time on your business, your health
or your family!

=====> What can you do to obtain a money magnet web site?

Fortunately, there are ways that you can automate your website
in much the same way that the big boys do. The best and most
cost-effective way would be to sign up with one of the handful
of Application Service Providers available on the internet which
provide a shopping cart integrated with a full suite of
marketing tools. Normally, the shopping cart and tools are very
flexible and can be incorporated into any website.

=====> Are there any other ways to automate your business
besides working with a total solution provider?

You can accomplish some level of automation without an
integrated shopping cart system, however, it will require manual
intervention and of course it would be incomplete. I believe
that the most important asset of your e-commerce business is
your email lists. Therefore, concentrate on the implementation
of a good autoresponder/list server system to "enhance" your
present e-commerce website. There are several good ones on the
market. Look for providers that allow you to:

- Create multiple lists.
- Add prospects via a web form, email, or manually through a
management console.
- Send out an unlimited number of autoresponder messages.
- Send out an unlimited number of email broadcasts.
- Set up and distribute a newsletter.

When setting up your autoresponder system, create one list for
your "prospects" and another one for your "customers". Now,
here's where you come in: when a person orders your product,
you will have to perform the extra task of logging into your
autoresponder system and manually remove them from the prospect
list and add them to the customer list. This action will then
trigger your customer autoresponder series of messages to be
sent.

Remember, the key to building a successful e-commerce web site
is to automate your marketing engine as much as possible and
drive your prospects and customers back to your web site. This
will certainly create a money magnet e-commerce web site for
you!

About the Author:
Izzy Camacho is an accomplished software developer with approximately 20 years of experience. He has a degree in computer science from a distinguished university. For the last several years he has been involved in the creation of web site applications for corporate America.