I have some strategies for increasing orders of your products. I'm sure you will reach great profits by using them. 


Join affiliate programs that go with the theme of your web site. You'll just be wasting valuable space and time if your visitors aren't interested in them. 


Market your web site as a free club instead of a web site. This'll increase your repeat visitors and sales because people enjoy belonging to groups. 


Persuade visitors to link to your web site. Give them a freebie in exchange for them linking to your web site. It could be content, software, etc. 


Interact with your online customers on a regular basis. This'll show them you care about them. You could use a chat room, forum or message system. 


Check your web site links regularly. After people click on one link, and it doesn't work, they usually won't risk wasting their time clicking on another one. 


Link to web sites that provide useful information or services for your visitors. If you have many useful links on your site, they may make it their start page. 


Share customers with other businesses that have the same target audience. Offer their product to your customers if, in exchange they do the same for you. 


Don't make your banner ads look like ads. Most people ignore banner ads. Design them to look like content and have them click to read the rest. 


Give visitors a positive experience when they're at your web site. Provide them with original content and free stuff. They'll tell all of their friends about it. 



You can give my tips a try and test... 
Stay in touch with your customers. Love them and they will love you too!

About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive, about £500 for a month's run. 

Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where clients of the calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought £300 was a lot for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to know and loathe. 

This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised how. 

So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!). 

1. Mambo Content Management System http://www.mambo.com 

I wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box becomes a mini HTML editor. 

If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site. 

To get it running you need to know how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package. 

You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users. 

The only criticisms I have of this software are: 

1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem! 

2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are more restrained ones out there. 

These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is essentially a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once you get familiar with it. 

To add ecommerce to your site: 

Oscommerce Shopping Cart http://www.oscommerce.com 

Again, this is a full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional shopping cart. 

Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the default cart files. When you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in, thus creating errors. 

The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than overwrite them) or that require minor alterations to existing files. 

What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is complex, I chuck it. 

Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to integrate them! Hyperlink from one to the other. I've tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh! 

*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ... 

It may offend your sense of tidiness for your visitors to have to sign up twice at your site, but you'll thank me for this sage advice later. Remember KISS is the basic rule of computing (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).

There are tens of thousands of websites offering free online games for those who want to have some fun online or find friends online. Don’t believe me? Make a simple search through your favorite search engine and you’ll see the vast amount of websites offering free online games. Finding friends through online games is easy and simple because you get to understand each other while playing games and connect with each other through the website’s chat or communicate function available right there in the website. 

Although not all online games website requires you to sign up in order to play their online games, some websites do require a simple sign-up. The information that you input into the online games website will become your member’s profile. Other members will be able to view your profile. Your likes, dislikes, favorite games, favorite movies, location (not address, please. Never enter your complete address online, anywhere), and personal characteristics will help you find friends through online games. 

Engaged in a competitive battle with each other, you are in a better position to gauge the kind of person that your opponent is, for instance, is he/she an aggressive person? Is he/she a strategically-minded person who is capable of planning everything from scratch? What is his/her favorite character and how does he/she use that online game character to his/her benefit? 

The reason why finding friends through online games is easy is because there are forums and chat rooms that online game fans can use to connect, share tips, communicate, make alliance, and chat with online. They share a common interest, a common goal...and the online games that they like become the foundation for their friendship. Not only do they battle it out playing online games but they essentially turn into friends after chatting and communicating with each other. 

It’s also safer finding friends through online games. Because the common interest is online games, basically, they just want to have some fun online and not lurk around endangering the lives of others. Although we should still be careful about revealing too much of ourselves online, we generally feel safer when we make friends through online games. 

You not only make new friends through online games, you can also connect with and play online games with your friends without having to visit an internet café. Even if your friends have gone to college or are working elsewhere in the world, you can still log on at the same time and enjoy a couple of hours of fun, unbridled fun through online games.

With intensified boom of forums nowadays, you may find yourself asking “What do these online communities have that they are slowly but surely spreading like wildfire?” 

For starters, let us name a few good things one can get from joining in forums. 

First and foremost, the reason why forums are so popular is because they are engaging. In a forum, “forumers” are given the maximum real person to people interaction. Unlike Chats or Instant Messaging, a forum can let a person interact with not just one or two persons; in a forum, you can practically let the entire world know about what you think or feel. And what is more beautiful is that there can be anonymity in a forum. Well, being anonymous has its own advantages and disadvantages but let us not dwell on it. The important thing about it is that, in a forum, you can choose to be or not to be anonymous. 

Another very nice thing about forums is that they provide participants the feeling of community and kinship with other forum members. Even if at times, you may not know each other, it is comforting to know that you share things in common. In most instances, participants really develop connection; we are not talking about internet connection but a real personal connection. Sometimes, conversations just don’t end up in the forums; others may even correspond in emails and end up talking on the phone. In other words, by participating in a forum, access to companionship, acquaintances, closeness and even relationships, is easy. 

Aside from the social interactions happening in forums, there are also forums that are more into the professional side and/or forums that target a specific community such as forums for the marketing community, for the writing community, for oppressed women, for women in general, and even for specific societies and organizations. The same thing goes for this kind of forums; people interact, share ideas, plans, help and support each other and/or simply talk to each other. The only difference is that they mostly talk about a specific topic. For instance, a forum for women only talks about issues that are unique to women such as PMS, menopause, make-up tips, women’s career and the like. 

I cannot resist adding this too. For people with something to plug or sell, joining in forums is also a good way to introduce your service or product, either blatantly or by making use of the signature feature in the forums. 

The usefulness of forums are too many to mention. Suffice it to say, in a forum, the interaction is limitless. You can ask for advice, give advice, share experiences, help others, gain friends, or just simply connect with other people in the most convenient way possible, 

There are so many forums nowadays -- from marketing forums, women’s forums, love forums, writing forums, self help forums, support group forums etc. etc. and it is not surprising that the number of participants also rise with the number of forums. It just goes to show that people need people, for interaction, for fun, for opinion, for relationships, or for anything else - there’s always a forum for it.