So how do you go about establishing your online credibility? You can do so in a few easy steps.

1) Come Up with Your Story

You need to have a compelling “where I came from” story.

Have you ever noticed how just about every product ever invented has a story? Weight loss products tell the story of someone who was perpetually overweight finally losing the fat. Real estate gurus talk about how they went from rags to riches.

Stories are compelling. Figure out an attention-catching, respect-inspiring story to base your online identity around.

2) What Results Have You Personally Gotten?

Don’t be afraid to share the results that you’ve personally gotten.

If you’re giving advice about how to make money, share exactly how you are making money. If you’re giving advice about losing weight, share your exact measurements.

People want to be able to relate to you. They want to be able to feel that you’re one of them, you know what they’re going through, and that if you can do it so can they.

3) Proof Elements on Your Page

You should have several proof elements readily visible on your web page.

For example, if you’ve appeared on radio stations, put the logos of the radio stations on your page under “as seen on.”

If you have before and after photos, put those on your page as well.

The idea is to give people bite-sized chunks of credibility. They might not even consciously look at it, but just having them there makes a difference.

4) Credibility in the First Impression

The first impression is very important. Though you can’t tell your whole story in the first impression, it’s important that you have one or two proof elements here.

Have a before and after picture above the fold. Or have a killer testimonials prominently displayed on the front page. Or have your most spectacular achievement showcased upfront.

5) Get Social Proof

Social proof is one of the most powerful ways of building credibility. Why? Because it doesn’t come from you.

Social proof means that other people who have no financial gain from endorsing you like your product enough to go out of their way to help you. It sends a strong message.

Social proof includes comments on blog posts, testimonials on other people’s blogs or word of mouth endorsements from friend to friend.

These are a few of the most powerful ways to establish your credibility online. In the beginning, this process takes quite a bit of thought, as you have to plan out your story and discover your proof elements. Once you’ve got it down, however, your proof elements will keep working for you again and again, without you having to do much work.

Here are a few of the best tips for achieving eCommerce excellence.

1. Make it Easy for All Buying Levels

Some people want to come to your website and buy right away. They want to land on your page, pull out their credit card and be done with the whole thing in two minutes or less.

Still others will want to come to your page and do a few hours of research.

Your site needs to be able to accommodate both. Amazon for example makes it very easy for people to order right away with its buy button above the fold. However, people can also spend ages researching reviews and related products to find the perfect thing for them.

2. Trust and Security

Trust and security is a big issue online when credit cards are involved.

Make sure you have 128-bit SSL encryption and that you have a secured server certificate. That means that your checkout page should say https:// rather than http://.

Also make sure your site is very well designed. Poor design indicates lack of trustability.

Finally, work on building your brand. That’s not something that can be done overnight, but absolutely plays a big role in conversions. Amazon converts 12% of their visitors into buyers – not because of brilliant copy, but because of a brand that’s built up over years.

3. Simplicity

It shouldn’t feel difficult to order from you. Try to take as many steps out of your checkout process as possible.

People who land on your site should at most have one or two choices. They can browse products or they can search. They can keep shopping or they can check out. They can pay by credit card or by PayPal.

Try not to overload them with choices. Avoid crowding your site with too many features. Make it very, very simple.

4. Return Policy

Make your return policy crystal clear. Try to be as generous as possible.

One place you can see the effect of return policies in action very clearly is eBay.

EBay is often filled with people selling very similar products for very similar prices. The margins are so low that it’s very hard for anyone to undercut anyone.

However, one area where certain sellers get an edge up is their return policies. Sellers with generous return policies will almost always outsell sellers with stingy return policies.

The same is true with eCommerce. If people know that they can get a full refund if they’re not satisfied, they’re a lot more likely to want to order. The risk to them is much reduced.

These are some of the top tips for achieving success in eCommerce. If your produce exceptional customer service, in the long run you’ll achieve exceptional results.

But before you start thinking about your web design, you need to have a good handle on your business goals and the identity you want to create for your website. Simply saying that you want “to be successful” isn’t enough – every business has that goal.

Instead, ask yourself what it is about your business that is going to convert visitors to your website into paying customers. Are you going to be the lowest priced provider of the type of product or service you’re selling? Are you going to be approaching your industry from a particular perspective (such as targeting the “work at home mom” market)? Do you want your business to convey a sense of professional expertise, or have a warmer, more “homey” experience?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you can use the information to make the various design choices about your new website. It’s important to let your business goals be a significant driver of your website design. If your content is geared towards a certain type of customer, but your website design gives a different (or even contradictory) message, then your business will have unnecessary roadblocks keeping it from success.

Though there aren’t really any hard and fast rules for web design, there are a few things that you might want to avoid. First, avoid having music automatically play on your website. Even if your business is music-related, many website visitors are going to be put off by having music play unless they’ve clicked a “play” button. Many web surfers leave their computer speakers set at a moderate or high volume because very few websites play music or sounds automatically. Any website that actually does play music is likely to be startling and unpleasant.

Second, be judicious in how many advertisements you put on your website and how your advertisements are displayed. It’s easy to let things get a little out of hand, especially if you build your website on a framework like WordPress. WordPress makes it easy to add advertising spaces on nearly any area of your website, so there’s always a temptation to add “just one more” advertising area on your site in an effort to make a little more money. It’s also bad form to have advertisements pop-ups on your website. Pop-ups can distract your visitors and make a fair percentage of them leave your website.

Finally, don’t be lured into using the latest and greatest web technologies of the day unless you have a good reason to do so. There are many different web browsers and browser versions in use, and each has a different level of support for these various web technologies. It’s usually better to make sure that everyone can view your website than it is to try to be dazzling.

Simply by focusing on your customers, and their experiences with your website, you’re more likely to make the right web design choices.

PayPal is the well-known heavyweight in online payment systems, and their credit card processing services are likely to be of most interest to businesses. PayPal’s two primary business products are “Website Payments Standard” and “Website Payments Pro.” Website Payments Standard is a great low-cost solution for businesses that want to accept credit card payments. There are no monthly fees associated with this service, so a business only pays (a small flat fee plus a small percentage of the transaction value) when someone buys something from them.

Website Payments Pro requires the business to pay a monthly fee, but in return the business gets to handle the entire payment transaction on their own site. With Website Payments Standard the customer is sent to the PayPal.com website to actually enter credit card information and complete the transaction, before being sent back to the merchant’s website. The fee for Website Payments Pro is currently $30 per month, and some businesses find that being able to keep their customers on their website for the entire transaction is worth the extra fee.

Other online payment systems have met with differing degrees of success. WebMoney is a secure service for online transfers, though it is less popular in the United States than it is in Russia and some Far East countries. Similarly, CashU is popular in the Middle East and North Africa, but has limited value in the United States.

The issue for these other services is something of a “chicken and egg” problem – without many domestic merchants accepting the payment system, fewer people in the U.S. sign up for it. But with fewer U.S. residents having accounts on those systems, there is little reason for businesses to start accepting payment through that system.

In addition, some early adopters may have had bad experiences with other systems. E-gold was a popular a digital currency system in the early 2000s, but the legal problems of the company and its management led to accounts being blocked for a period of time. It therefore remains to be seen whether nascent online payment systems such as Bitcoin will continue gaining strength.

Because an increasing amount of online commerce is occurring on mobile devices such as smart phones, it is also worth highlighting a few secure mobile payment systems. Mobile payments are not quite as mature as the online payment space, but there are a few different services that are likely to become bigger players in the future. Google Wallet is currently a leader in the secure mobile payment space for android device users. Visa is also pushing its own product (called Visa Wallet) in the mobile space.

Regardless of what happens with services mentioned above, it’s likely that the secure online payment mechanism will become increasingly popular in the future.

But does it have a business application? Can it actually make a significant impact on your bottom line, or is it just a nice tech toy?

Let’s explore the issue.

A Laptop with Constant Connectivity

There are many things a business owner can do with an iPad that he/she couldn’t do with just a laptop – or just an iPhone, for that matter.

For one, you can check your email, bank accounts or business documents from anywhere with the 3G network. You don’t need Wi-Fi. This is often very useful in spare moments on buses, on a walk, during lunch, etc.

While the iPhone has the same capability, writing long emails or doing complex functions on the iPhone just isn’t practical. The touch type screen is just too small to write long emails. The iPad solves that issue.

A Power-Horse for Sales People

According to a ChangeWave survey, published in PC World Magazine, 46% of business people who bought the iPad did so with the intention of using it for “sales support,” and 45% use it for “customer presentations.”

Imagine sitting across from a customer. Instead of pulling out an old-fashioned binder for a presentation, you instead whip out your sleek iPad.

You go through each slide, complete with full color graphics and possibly even audio/video. You scroll through slides quickly and easily with the flick of a finger.

While not every customer will be impressed by this kind of sleek technology, many will be. Especially in more technology-oriented fields, it shows clients that you’re at the cutting edge and know what you’re doing technically.

Finally, after the meeting you can instantly log onto your Customer Management System (i.e. Salesforce.com, etc.) and log how the meeting went. Unlike a laptop which requires Wi-Fi or an iPhone which can’t display everything on its screen, the iPad allows you to have full screen access and a large touch-type screen to instantly enter in how the meeting went.

Does Your Business Need It?

It depends. If a small increase in performance can mean big increases in profits for your business, then the answer may very well be “Yes!” For example, a real estate agent whose average commission is $20,000 is probably making a wise investment to spend the $500 to get an iPad that’ll impress certain clients.

People in tech-savvy fields can also really benefit from having an iPad. Again, it shows that you’re staying competitive both technologically and in your business.

If on the other hand you’re in a field where a small increase in volume won’t impact business much and tech-savvyness isn’t valued, then the iPad may not be a great business investment. It depends entirely on who your clients are and what field you’re in.

If you want to succeed in the search engines, it’s crucial that you follow link building best practices. What are these practices? Here they are.

Shoot for One-Way, High Authority Links from Related Sites

These three factors are the most important factors for determining link quality.

* One way – If the link is reciprocal, Google vastly discount the link.

* High authority – Getting one link from the New York Times is easily worth more than 10,000 links from brand new websites. Get links from high authority sites. In the past “authority” meant page rank, but today Google takes a lot more than just page rank into account.

* Related – If you have a ton of unrelated sites linking to you, Google will look at your site with suspicion. In natural markets, people link to one another within the same topics and industry. Search engine spammers on the other hand tend to buy links en mass from unrelated sites. Get links from within your industry.

These are the three most important factors for evaluating link quality.

Get a Mix of Link Sources

There are many different places you can get links from.

* Contextual – This is the best place you can get links from. If your site is mentioned in another site in relevant context, that’s viewed very highly in Google’s eyes.

* Static site links – Getting a link on someone else’s site, especially authority and/or related sites is viewed highly by Google.

* Blog commenting – Blog commenting used to be an effective way to get ahead in the rankings, but comment spam has gotten commenting downgraded. That said, it can still help your rankings quite a bit.

* Forum postings – Forum postings with a link back to your site in the thread or in a signature can help your rankings as well, especially if the forum is related.

Getting a mix of link sources is the best way to appear organic while getting a fair volume of inbound links. Don’t just use one technique – use them all.

Anchor Texts & Deeplinking

Most webmasters link primarily to their home page. If you do that, however, chances are you’re missing out on a lot of link-juice opportunities to get sub-pages ranked.

Instead of sending all your links to your home page, link to relevant subpages. Get these ranked for long tail keywords. Your home page will also gain in ranking as a result. Focus on getting backlinks to pages deep in your site.

Also, make sure your anchor texts are relevant to the page they’re linking to, rather than your home page. Anchor text is extremely important in determining the relevance of the link.

The basis for this comment was that Google Docs has a collaborative function built in, and that using it over traditional word processing could help alleviate the back and forth sending of emails and attachments that has always come along with collaborative writing. I thought the idea was intriguing and decided to check out Google Docs for myself. I was quite pleasantly surprised.

Google Docs offers all the features necessary to draw up most types of documents you’ll write on a day to day basis. It lacks many of the features of Word 2007, but only those that are there as an extra convenience without being really necessary. If you’re coming from Word 2000, you probably won’t notice anything missing. You can save in a variety of formats including .doc, open document, PDF and HTML.

You can upload documents from your computer to edit and you can send documents by email or publish them right from the online interface. The feature that really makes Google Docs worth using though is the sharing function. Once you’ve created your document, you can share it with others and invite them on to be contributors.

Those added as contributors can then edit the document directly from their own Google account. Of course, as the “owner” of the document, you have the final say on edits. The value of this is that now on a document that might require three or four revisions from one of more people other than the author, the author of the document can simply upload or write their document in Google Docs and then invite in the editors or reviewers as contributors to the document. This could save a ton of back and forth emails with edited drafts attached, helping reduce the inbox clutter that often goes hand in hand with collaborative writing.

I’d suggest anyone that does any volume of writing check out this app., as there may be times when it makes your writing process significantly easier. By simply logging in with your Google account, you can access this useful web 2.0 app. completely free. I’d say this one is definitely one of Google’s winners.

However, for many, the idea of custom coding and designing their own unique website is a nightmare, invoking a sense of dread, whether it be due to lack of technical prowess, lack of time or just a sheer hatred for coding. Hiring local programers is an option, but the fees demanded by quality North American IT professionals (especially good web developers) is a huge draw back for many, and for some completely unfeasible.

Luckily for those folks that understand the benefit of a unique and functional website, but don’t have a Fortune 500 bank account, there is another option that allows both a customized website without having to break the bank.

Hiring coders and designers from overseas is currently easier than it has ever been, with a multitude of services available to help people in need of IT work with professionals willing to take on their projects. Sites like RentaCoder.com make it exceptionally easy to find the right people to do almost any kind of creative work that someone could need, from graphic design to back end coding to content writing. Domestic coders from the United States and Canada are also available through the site, but the real value lies in the coders coming out of India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe and other such emerging economies.

These professionals are well educated and highly proficient in their specific fields, often times just as good as their North American counterparts. However, due to the often significantly lower costs of living in the countries where these coders live and do business, the cost of projects is often significantly lower, often 50%-80% lower, than using domestic professionals. As well as lowering costs based on labor prices, these sites also operate on a bidding system, where the buyer posts information on the project and IT professionals bid on the projects. Because the lower they bid, the better their chances of winning the contract are, competition arises for your business, further driving down your costs.

As with any open market though, not all providers are created equal. While there are many, many high quality, low cost IT professionals on these sites, there are also an equal number of poor quality ones with poor abilities or no experience.  In order to help buyers avoid these poor quality options, the sites use ratings systems in which buyers rate the coders, designers and creative professionals they use based on the final results of their projects.

These ratings are very effective in weeding out the poor quality bids that will inevitably spring up in your project’s bid request. Always ensure to do a detailed check of any prospective bidders feedback, and ensure that they’ve received good ratings on projects that match the size, scope and cost of your own project. A coder with a perfect 10 rating on all $100 jobs will likely not be the best choice for a $10,000 project.

I would recommend to any business owner or entrepreneur who does web work to at the very least check out this option. Put up a lower value project and get a feel for the kind of quality you can receive from a carefully selected overseas IT professional. The experience may well make you confident enough to use freelancers on your next larger scale project, which could save you a significant amount of money!

To put up a bid request on RentACoder.com, go to the RentACoder bid request page and fill in the information on your project to start receiving bids.