More than ever, it has been difficult sustaining a business, whether offline or online.

This is because of the stiff competition both at the search engine level and marketing costs online.

We must acknowledge that marketing is the lifeline of any business. The economic terms of demand and supply comes to play here. Marketing a business offline has become very expensive. Why? Because there are very many advertisers (read your competitors) chasing a few advertising media. That is too much demand for advertising against limited supply of advertising media.

To win online, we must be patient as we do the following. We must not expect too much in very little time as we will be dissapointed. We must think building an online business like building a real estate. You keep on paying money but receiving nothing in return. But when you have completed, you keep on receiving.

We must make sure that first we win on the search engines. Whe we have won the search engines, very few resources will be needed in advertising but visitors (read buyers) keep on coming.

To win the search engines, the following is critical.

1. Keyword researched pages
2. Good optimized web pages
3. Lots of good quality links from various sources build over time
4. Lots of good quality web content build over time
5. Visitor holding methods like social book marking and ezine subscription

When we have perfected in these, then the search engines will become our friends which will translate to more money in the bank.