The headlines are dark and the outlook bleak for the economy. Yet some online businesses are booming because of the simple steps they're taking, not only to survive the recession, but to beat it with sustained profits.

As a first step, online businesses should aim to retain the same level of income they're used to. Once this is achieved, they shouldn't be content with a level sales graph; they need to look at increasing sales despite the recession.
Just this act alone, deciding to not to give in but working out how to trump the downturn is an important psychological hurdle; once you're over that hurdle, and you believe that it can be done, you're half way there.

Remember just a few months ago gas was approaching five dollars a gallon. The impact of that was that people just stopped driving, besides taking the absolutely essential trips like commuting to work and grocery shopping. Others saved on gas by carpooling or by taking public transportation.

Because people were staying at home more, they were shopping online more; thus online sales actually rose in some sectors. Today, as of the date of this publication, gas prices have steadily dropped since demand is low. But consumers are still pinched and have gotten used to saving on gas and not taking so many trips to the mall or the grocery store. The result is they are still shopping online more than ever before; people have gotten used to it. This is just one example of how current market conditions affect online sales. Whatever happens with the economy – bar a fully fledged depression – eCommerce and online shopping are here to stay and online sales are projected to increase!

The key is to act now and start a number of online sales initiatives to ensure the continued loyalty and retention of your online shoppers. If your company doesnʼt sell products online, now would be a good time to look into setting up a shopping cart or at least employing an online form for new visitors to complete as a lead generation source.

Some of the simple things one can do right away is to start a Google Adwords campaign. Such a campaign literally takes less than 10 minutes to set up. Adwords are the little boxed text ads you see on Google search result pages on the right and the shaded rectangle ads you see on the very top. After these paid ads come the natural search results (unpaid). These are also called “organic” search results. The unpaid results – i.e., ranking on the first page of Google for your key search terms – require optimizing your website for the search engines. More on that later, but if you are looking to get some instant results, and instant traffic to your site, establishing a Google Adwords campaign is the way to go. Just go to Google, and click on “Advertising Programs” below the search box and they will walk you through the rest.