So many people WANT to start their own on-line business, but the question is where are you on that path?
Are you still thinking and dreaming about it?
Have you identified the business and market you want to address?
Have you figured out what value you can bring to that market AND how to take full advantage of your own interests, passions, experience and skills?
Perhaps you are further along, and you already have a website, maybe even a product or service but you need to begin taking payment or even expand your traffic and profit?
If you have read this far then I assume you are at least interested (if not already operating) your own on-line business…so go ahead and post a comment with a quick description of where you are in the journey to operating your own profitable on-line business.
It’s Important To Know Where You Are So You Know Where To Go Next
Inside InfoMarketer’sZone we get asked all of the time for information on a specific tactic, technique, business model or aspect of running an on-line business, but here’s what I noticed that is REALLY interesting…
So many of you are putting the cart before the horse.
Here are some examples:
- If you are wondering how to run Facebook ads but you do not yet have a well designed sales funnel – you are putting the cart before the horse
- If you are curious about the web pages, platforms and operational aspects of your business BEFORE you are crystal clear on your business, market and unique value – you are putting the cart before the horse
- When you generate content like a madman without having tested your product, landing pages and sales page – you are putting the cart before the horse
- When you try to boil the ocean by learning every aspect of running an on-line business BEFORE you get a handle on what your business will do and how it will benefit the lives of your target market – you are putting the cart before the horse
Do you see what I mean?
What I see so many people doing (and yes, it is SO tempting), is to fall in love with tactics, techniques or methods that others have used to motivate them without building a solid business foundation in the first place.
This Will Help You Stay On Track
First, let me say that the 6-week InfoProfit Fast-Track Program inside InfoMarketer’sZone was designed specifically to walk on-line business entrepreneurs through a step-by-step process resulting in a successful and profitable business launch and growth phase.
Many people ask me “Is it really possible to launch a business in 6-weeks or less from nothing?”
The answer is YES…and the reason is because you stay laser-focused, avoid distraction and do what matters each day so that you build a solid foundation and launch point for your on-line business…
Without this process guiding you, many people flounder, get distracted, make the wrong decisions, miss steps or skip steps that end up hurting their business growth.
All of this inefficiency costs them months of wasted time, typically leads to several false starts and prevents so many of you from reaching the business goals that you have set in your mind.
Here are 6 phases that you want to stay focused on during your process of building your on-line business:
1. Market Selection
You have very little chance of creating a successful business without identifying a market and THEN drill into that market to discover critical niche demand. The niche demand leads to niche products and marketing which allow you to grow quickly and dominate your market
2. Unique Value
Creating high-value businesses comes down to two things 1) Insane Demand and 2) Your unique ability to satisfy that demand. Demand is critical but insufficient in itself…to really drive your profits you want a strong alignment between demand and your ability to add value to a marketplace
3. Products & Service Strategy
I talk about this often with our InfoMarketer’sZone members – you, of course, need an initial product or service to sell into your market…but even more, you MUST have a product strategy.
What I mean is that you want to develop some basic, low-end, market entry offers, some mid-range offers and some higher-end offers for those who are most eager and able to pay in your marketplace. Even though you may have one product or a single product idea today, you want to have a product strategy that takes into account up-selling, cross-selling, and bundled sale opportunities.
Out of the gate, you want to decide if you will start with your own product, or with affiliate products…either way is fine, but the ultimate goal should be to eventually introduce your own products giving you higher profits, more leverage, added credibility and more control in your on-line business
4. Market Persona
99% of on-line marketers miss this step yet it is perhaps the MOST important step in capturing a significant portion of your market. Your market persona is the character and story that you want to communicate to your market about you or your business.
People buy from other people and companies that they trust, like, respect, and believe will help them over time…to tap into these basic selling psychology principles you MUST understand the story and messages you take to your market making sure they are both capturing interest, building trust and credibility and standing out from the crowd.
5. On-Line Business Setup & Sales Funnel
This is where you want to strategically plan the website structure you want to use for your business taking into account:
- Sales/offer pages
- Lead generation (landing or squeeze) pages
- Content pages (blogs, video collections, podcasts, articles, publicity, testimonials, etc…)
- Sales funnel (referring to the series of pages and autoresponder messages that walk your cold prospects through on the way to putting offers in front of them)
I hope by now you see that each of the previous steps will feed directly into creating your websites, offer pages and sales funnels…that is why you can’t simply jump to this step and ever hope to be successful on-line.
6. Generate Traffic, Test And Tweak
Now that you have all of the pieces in place, your market, your market persona, your sales and landing pages, your products, etc…you can move to generating traffic, testing and improving your Return on Investment for your marketing dollars spent.
You have 3 broad choices of generating tarffic:
- Content Generation & SEO
- Paid Ad Traffic (Facebook, Google, Instagram Ads for example)
- Affiliate/Partner Traffic (from your own affiliate program)
Ultimately you want to employ all 3, which one you start with depends heavily on factors including your budget, your skills (what you are effective at), if you have your own products out of the gate, and your return on marketing dollars.
If you have budget, then running ad traffic and tweaking your ROI to where you find profitability is a good approach – but you still want to create content as well so that those who do not click on ads will find you via your content.
Affiliate generated traffic is excellent given that it is already “warm” and typically converts well if you choose your partners well, but of course only works if you have your own product and set your business up to manage affiliates.
As you can see, building your own successful internet business is not exceptionally difficult, but does require the knowledge, discipline and persistence of sticking to a well-proven plan.
Where are you on your on-line business journey?
