There are tons of online businesses that never break even, even more than earn a “hobby” income for their startup entrepreneur.
The challenge is how to become a top online business, an internet business that you can scale and continue to grow and eventually sell for a $Million or more…if you want to.
Here are 5 things you need to master to build a massively profitable online business.
1. Solve A BIG Problem, Provide Huge Value
Many start-up entrepreneurs expect that they can put a website up, sell someone else’s product or put up some business scheme or proposal and suddenly they will become rich. The fact is that your online business is no different from an offline business in that you must still identify a VALUE that you provide to a target audience. Oh yes, and the bigger the value, the bigger your profits will be
2. Know Your Target Market Better Than Anyone
I get asked all the time, “do you think this market is real…” or “do you think my product will sell to X or Y?” Any top-notch entrepreneur would not be asking me these questions, the first rule in any business is that you MUST have a clearly identified target market and you must know them almost better than they know themselves. You cannot expect anyone else to tell you if your product will sell…it is up to you to know the frustrations, challenges and desires of your marketplace – if you don’t, then get closer to your market and get to know them. You will find almost immediately your results will improve. Not only will you get to know their biggest challenges, understand the products they want the most, but you will also gain important insights into how to market and persuade that market to buy from you.
3. Know How To Communicate, How To Influence and How to Sell
Many people tell me they don’t like to sell. They have a firmly held belief that they are not good at selling (beliefs govern thoughts and thoughts govern actions…if you don’t believe you are good, you won’t be). Yet we are ALL involved in selling something to someone every day. You want your spouse to agree with you on a decision, you have to persuade and sell to them. You want the best deal on cable TV, a new car, a house – you must sell this to the salesman.  You want your kids to do chores around the house, you have to influence them to do them and teach them why. Get over the fear or negative beliefs around selling…it happens, the only question is are you good at it or are you bad?
4. Clarify, Simplify, Add Value
Does your business, product or service clarify, simplify or add value to your customer helping them streamline the path to achieving a desired outcome in their life. If you offer a weight loss program, does your system do something to simplify or streamline the process of losing weight? If not, you better find a way to add more value or your online business will simply limp along.
5. Does It Scale…
You should be asking this question about everything you do.  Too many people start one-off businesses that depend heavily on certain events, skills or personal effort. If you target a specific market with a product, can you see a path to scaling that to additional products? How are you reaching your market…is there a path to exponentially scaling that if you see some early success?  I often teach people inside InfoMarketer’sZone to plan their initial online business as if it is “in beta” – where they try different products, messages, communication paths and marketing channels to find the combination that works the best, then you can rapidly expand your business through scale once you know you have the right combination of market, product, message and return.
Anyone can start their own online business, but only those that pay attention to the important characteristics and actions can succeed.
