Building a business online can be incredibly difficult and time consuming. It takes a huge time investment to build a fan base of loyal customers and endless hours of content building and online promotion if you want it to be successful. In this post 5 Steps To Building An Online Business I’m going to take you through the 5 most important steps to building a successful online business.
STEP 1: Try to find a niche your passionate about. Online business is all about finding a niche product or service that you are knowledgeable and passionate about. Now that doesn’t mean you have to go to school for 10 years on the topic, all you need to know is more than the average person in your target market knows which isn’t hard to do with a little online research on your subject matter.
The reason to find a niche your passionate about is so you can get past the hurdles and frustration that you will no doubt face while trying to grow your online business. Without a strong passion for what you’re doing, or a strong “Why Factor” then you’re a lot more likely to give up when things are bad.
STEP 2: Do your research. Be sure people are actually looking for what it is your business is offering. It’s great to have your very own niche that you love but if nobody else is searching for it, you’ll waste countless hours of your time wondering why nobody is jumping on whatever you’re offering. A great tool for this is the free Google Keyword Planner. This tool will let you know how many people are looking for your niche and whether or not it’s a good one to pursue.
STEP 3: Locate your target market. Great, you’ve found your niche and you’re excited to get rolling with your new business. A BIG mistake people make at this point is targeting the wrong audience. Although it may seem like a good idea to go for some of the cheap paid advertising methods online that promise loads of traffic to your site…DON’T DO IT. Trust me I’ve been there done that and it is way better to take the time to find and interact with targeted customers than driving a bunch of garbage traffic to your site.
A great starting point is Facebook. Do a search and find / join similar interest groups. Don’t post about your product or service in these groups, rather offer advice and comment on others posts. Become the expert and if / when they ask, you can then offer some of your services or products. You’ll want to build your own Facebook fan page as well for your particular niche so when people do ask, you can lead them there. Chances are if someone is interested, they’re going to do their own research and that will be the first place they land.
STEP 4: Create a “System” to monetize. This is likely going to be the most difficult part of building your new business. The good news is that once it’s done, it’s done and you can then focus on building traffic sources and getting visitors into your system.
What do I mean by a system? Well, online business nowadays can be very highly automated which is great because you can literally earn income on auto-pilot. A system is a process visitors to your site will go through that will ultimately turn them into loyal paying customers. Just as important as finding those paying customers is filtering out people that you don’t want to work with as well and part of your system will do this for you.
To start off you’ll want to setup a website for your niche or alternatively use your Facebook page discussed in step 3. Either one will work and both have pros and cons. You don’t need to get complicated here either. Don’t fall into the trap (like I do all the time) of trying to make the best looking website or the best looking Facebook fan page before launching your new business. This will only slow you down and surprisingly most people don’t really care all that much anyway.
If you’re looking to build a website quickly, a product that I use to make fast easy sales “Systems” is called ClickFunnels. I highly recommend checking it out as it’s an all-in-one solution for online business and although it has it’s own learning curve like anything new, it will save you a lot of time in the long run. Click here to get a 14 day trial and see what you think.
An example “System” may include a landing page which is the first page people see when they go to your website. This gives a quick overview of your product or service, maybe a video you’ve made or some featured images of your product. Ideally what you’re trying to do with this page is filter those visitors that have an interest in your niche vs those that don’t. This page should only be a teaser and have an optin form to get a persons name and email address, then it will take them to your main sales page that has all the details of your offering with a way to make a purchase.
This brings me to the next most important part of your online business…an email list. I cannot stress enough how important it is to build up a quality list of followers. This is like printing money. Once you have enough people on your list that are true fans of your product or service, you will literally be able to sit on your couch, write an email, broadcast it to your list and watch your bank account fill up. It is an amazing feeling of freedom. You can literally work from anywhere with your laptop and earn an income once you’re at this stage.
There are several list building tools out there and ClickFunnels also includes one on their higher priced plan. There are others like MailChimp and Aweber to name a few.
STEP 5: Build your DMO and stick with it. A Daily Method of Operation is your best friend when it comes to online marketing. In the beginning it’s going to feel like nothing is happening and your wasting your time getting a piddly amount of people viewing your site. This is normal so don’t sweat it. At first when you start building your site and posting some articles it’s a time for you to practice. Trust me your articles will suck at first but they will get better with time and in the beginning stages, your just learning the ropes and building material for Google to find and index in it’s search results.
The critical thing here is to make a list of tasks to do every single day and DO THEM. This is hard for many people but the passion you have for your niche and the eventual payout will carry you through this period. Your tasks may look something like this: Monday – write a blog post and find 5 new prospects on Facebook. Tuesday – create a video and post on Facebook page. Wednesday – call 3 new businesses and discuss your offering.
Your DMO doesn’t have to be difficult and in fact it should be very simple and easy to repeat. It is not the quantity you do in a single day but rather the compound effect of your efforts over time that will have the biggest impact on your new online business.
Many of you reading this may feel this is too techie for you. I get it and there is a lot of technical components to setting this all up. However there are tools that can help including an awesome FREE book called Dotcom Secrets that will guide you through the entire process. It’s worth the effort to learn because if done right, you could have your very own online business earning you income while you sleep.
Thanks for reading 5 Steps To Building An Online Business.
