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Focus, focus, focus.

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It is important to maintain your focus on what you actually want to achieve. Are you aiming for an additional income to supplement an existing wage; or are you looking to make an Internet business a full-time occupation?

Whatever your focus is, it is important that you continually work towards it until you achieve it, whatever knockbacks or challenges you receive along the way.

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Be careful what you read - beware of information overload.

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There is so much information out there about how to do business online, much of it contradictory, that it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Rather than read everything and anything you can get your hands on, it is best to find just a few people who you trust, who have a good reputation, and who are actually qualified to give the advice they give, and listen to them.

A little high-quality information can be worth a great deal.

It is also useful to watch what they actually do, and compare that to what they say - sometimes the two are very different, and following what they do is far more useful.

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Don't aim for perfection before you 'launch'.

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No web site is ever perfect, and if you try to reach a high level of perfection before you launch or make your site live, you will lose more than you can achieve. Plus your version of 'perfection' may differ a great deal to what actually works with your market.

Once your site is functional and of a reasonable quality, start promoting it immediately. Start to build up your mailing list by requesting the email addresses of your visitors. Test what works with your visitors and what does not, and alter your site accordingly.

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Listen to your visitors and customers.

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When you have started and got a web site up and running, it is important to listen to your visitors and customers, and to treat them with great respect. Not only will you learn a great deal from them about what the market is actually looking for, you can also earn lifelong customers and friends.

Positive comments from customers can be used with their permission as testimonials on your web site, which will strengthen your online credibility and profit potential.

Be prepared to continually adjust your web site to meet the market demands. A web site is never 'finished', a successful web site must evolve over time on a continual path of improvement.

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But most importantly...

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Decide to succeed - right now.

Copyright 2004 Steve Shaw

Steve Shaw of takanomi.com develops software and systems for effective e-marketing. His PopUpMaster Pro software at http://popupmaster.com creates popups that beat the popup blockers and which you can use with Google Adwords.