Very interesting statistics were published on the World Internet Usage Statistics and Population. From this table it shows that only 15%! of the world uses the internet which is surprisingly low. When you consider Asia alone has over 50% of world’s population it starts to make more sense given their low adoption rate. This combined with Africa which has an expected low adoption rate of less than 3% really lowers the world average.

Taken from Read/Write Web -Worldwide Internet Penetration is just 15%

From a business perspective I can see a lot of business plans referencing to the strong growth in Asia and companies expanding their services and language versions to accommodate these countries. There appears to be an opportunity to focus on this market with a long term view to grab the huge population yet to embrace the internet the way we have in the west. Surely the likes of China and India will eventually have internet adoption closer to 50% of the population. Japan for example has a very good internet adoption to match the US and some countries in Europe.

I didn’t spot any exact figures for Ireland but maybe someone can point me to another resource so we can compare and contrast with the rest of the world. From a personal point of view I wonder how closely those percentage adoption rates correlate with business internet adoption rates in those countries.

A great thread has been started on sitepoint giving you a guide optimizing your website for search engines.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361403

Before you write one line of code:

• Do keyword research to determine what keywords you want to target

While constructing your website you should do the following:

• Use markup to indicate the content of your site

• Optimize your ‘title’ tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
• Create unique Meta Tags for each page
• Use header tags appropriately (H1 - H2 - H3)
• Use ’strong’ and ‘em’ tags if appropriate

Optimize your URLs

• Use Search Engine Friendly URLs (for dynamic sites)
• Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
• Use keywords in your URL
  (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)

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• Use dashes instead of underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)

Optimize your content

• Use keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
• Have unique content
• Have quality content

Use search engine friendly design

• Create a human sitemap
• Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript menus)
• Minimized outbound links
• Kept your pages under 100K in size

Design the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)

Create a page that encourages webmasters to link to your site

• Provide them the relevant HTML to create their link to you
• Provide them with any images you may want them to use (although text links are better)

Make sure your website is complete before launching it

Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:

Submit your site to all major search engines

• Google (Use a Google SiteMap)
• Yahoo (Use the page list option)
• MSN (Finds your site via incomming links)
• Ask (Finds your site via incomming links)

Submit your site to all free directories

• DMOZ (also powers Google Directory)
• JoeAnt

Submit your site to relevant directories

• Find more at ISEDB

Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the link anchor text)

• Put a link to your website in your forum signatures
• Reply to relevant blog posts (Don’t spam please)
• Submit articles to relevant websites

If you will pay to promote your website:

Submit your site to pay directories

• Yahoo
• GoGuides

Purchase text links from high PR (Pagerank) sites related to your site

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:

Continually update your website will quality, unique content

Continually seek free links preferably from sites in your genre

Do NOT do the following:

Make an all Flash website (without an HTML alternative)

Use JavaScript for navigation

Spam other websites for incomming links

Launch your site before it is done

Use duplicate content

• Point several domains to one site without using a 301 redirect

Use markup inappropiately

• Style ‘h’eader tags to look like regular text
• Hide content using ‘display: hidden’ (for the sake of hiding text)

Use other “black hat” techniques (unless you accept the risk - Banning)

• Doorway/Landing pages
• Cloaking
• Hidden text
• Keyword stuffing

Additional Tips:

Usable and accessible sites tend to be search engine friendly by their very nature

Be patient! High rankings don’t happen overnight

Don’t obsess with any one search engine. They are all worth your attention.

Also mentioned is this very useful tool: http://www.nichebot.com/

Someone on sitepoint recently asked for some advice on the costs of building a online store and if it was possible with $5k.

First off, building a website and thinking a your most of the way there is crazy.. like building a shop in the middle of the Sahara desert… it can be the best shop in the world but no one will find it. ecommerce is about marketing first and foremost… not the traditional marketing but pay-per-click and seo etc. (this may be obvious but i think it needs to be said.)
50% of time and money should be allocated to marketing at least.

Also, while dropshipping is a great option really you should buy stock if you have any confidence in selling your products.

Some possible steps to consider when building a online store with jshop for example (substitute oscommerce if you like)

Hosting & Domain Name Registration

Maintenance.

This doesn’t include,
Accounting, purchasing stock and shipping products and more i haven’t thought of.

Time is a real cost as mentioned earlier.. while you may buy stock, build a website and market it for 5k you won’t do it without sacrificing a large proportion of your time…How much is your time worth?.. value it on an hour basis… lets assume you don’t value yourself very highly and you think your time is worth $20 an hour.

A store like this built right for 5k could take 3 months of your time almost completely. That’s 10k worth of your time. So in reality it cost you 15k. If you pay a consultant and they do half the work for you then isn’t it worth 5k to you? I’d imagine you could do other things in the mean time.

Its all about ROI(Return on Investment) and understanding time really is money no matter how you slice it.

The money & time required to market a store is directly proportionate to the competitiveness of the market. So if your trying to sell ipods then you’ll have to pay a hell of allot to attract attention. The demand then determines your potential revenue.

Naturally there are smarter ways of doing things which give you the advantage. The question you have to ask is do you have an advantage over anyone doing well in the market currently?