You Want To Start An Online Business, So Treat It Like A Business - Part 3

It is time for the 3rd part of our 4 part series today. If you missed the first two parts or want to refer back you can do it here:

Part 1

Part 2

Today I want to discuss various marketing channels you can use in your online business.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are very popular on the internet, and are one of the easier ways to get involved in internet marketing.

By taking part in an affiliate program, you can get started with no capital outlay. You don’t need to keep any stock and you don’t have to be involved in shipping any products.

All you do is to make recommendations of products of other vendors, and you refer people to their websites. If any purchases are made, you earn a commission.

There are some great services available online to assist you. They will make life easier for you and keep you safe. These are services such as CLICKBANK and LINKSHARE to name but a few. These services provide centralized locations where you look at various affiliate programs from different vendors, and you can join the ones you prefer.

They provide you with affiliate links and “banner code” to place links and/or banners on your website for the program of your choice. When someone click on one of these links or banners, they will be redirected to the vendor’s website, and if a sale is made, the sale is tracked and you will be paid a commission.

Most of these services provide online reporting, to enable you to monitor your results.

Your Own Product / Online Store

It is also popular to create your own product to market on the internet. By doing this you can then build a team of affiliates to market your product, thus making use of leverage by duplicating your efforts through many people. In this case you can also list your product at the services mentioned under affiliate programs, such as CLICKBANK. This will enable affiliate marketers to register for your specific affiliate program.

Creating and /or running your own online store is another way of creating a great passive income, where people return for repeat business month after month. By doing this, you will not only be able to make money, but you will save lots of money, by just doing things you normally do.   The reason I say this, is that if you need to buy a product for everyday use, or a book you want to read, and you have an affiliate link of either Amazon.com or TripleClicks.com on your website, you would much rather now buy it from your “own store” than from someone else.

Network Marketing

In affiliate marketing you do not have any capital outlay, stock problems etc., but you are only relying on your own marketing efforts.  Creating your own product, you can use the power to leverage the efforts of many people to produce much better results, by recruiting affiliate marketers to market the product for you. Yet you will have to put in the effort to create a quality product in order to create any sales.

When joining a network marketing company online, you shouldn’t have any capital outlay. Yet you won’t be relying on only your own marketing efforts, seeing that you will be building a down line of other marketers as well. By teaching these people, and duplicating your efforts through them, you can also utilize the power to leverage their efforts to your advantage.

Yet, you would not have to create a new product, seeing that you will be marketing the product or the service of the networking company that you joined.  You would also not have to keep inventory, neither deal with shipping of any products, as this will be the responsibility of the company. 

You also should have the back-up and support of your sponsor, seeing that your success will also mean better success to him/her. And ultimately you should be enjoying a good support system from the company, providing training, marketing tools and customer service.

Go to Part 4 here.

You Want To Start An Online Business, So Treat It Like A Business - Part 2

Daily Action To Grow Your Business                         

This is the second of our 4 part series on starting your online business. If you missed the first part, you can can read it here.  

Today I want to talk about your daily actions. Once you have committed to the success of your online business and you have set your goals, take action on a daily basis. Always know what to do next. Your next step (however small it might be) must bring you closer to your goal.

You will never achieve anything by just thinking about it. You achieve your business goals (or any other goals for that matter) only by doing……by taking action every day.

Your next step can literally be “taking a next step” (which can also be turned into smaller individual goals), or it can be action steps, some of which can be taken on a daily basis.

Here are some ideas of what you can do on a daily basis:

• Add some prospects to your prospect list. 
•  Follow up with recent prospects. 
•   Place advertisements (paid advertisements or free classifieds).
• Set up a tracking system to track results on your advertising. (I can recommend TrafficXcess, Easy Simple Money Maker.com, and ViralTraffic4U – these are all free systems you can use).
• Review your tracking results on your advertising.
• Work on your social media strategy.
• Subscribe to a good internet marketing course.  
• Review some lessons from the course you are following
•  Take part in forum discussions relating to your niche. 
•   Send out a news letter to your prospects and/or customers.
•  Post on your blog.
•  Write one or more articles.
•  Search on Google for articles on how to become a better internet marketer and read them.
•   If you are part of a networking or MLM program, contact your sponsor and let him know what you are doing. Ask for his advice or suggestions.
•  If you have a down line, contact members and find out if you can assist them in any way. (Learn to help others in order to help yourself).
•  Review your goals

It is not to say that you have to do all the above every single day, these are guidelines and examples. You might do some every day; some might be twice per week or even once a week. It all depends on your “game plan”.

Go to Part 3 here.

You Want To Start An Online Business, So Treat It Like A Business - Part 1

A Hobby Or A Business?

So you want to start an online business. Why do you want to do it?...There is so much to discuss about this subject, I decided to publish a series of 4 posts to cover the topic as it is to much for 1 post.

 If you want to start your online business, you need to decide right from the beginning whether you want to just run it as a hobby, or do you plan to build it into a real business. By referring to “real business”, I mean you must be able to earn a full-time income from it.

If you are just looking for a hobby and generating an income is not one of your goals, fine, just have fun with it. But if you want to create a business, then treat it like a business from day one. If you think about starting to treat it like real business as soon as it starts to generate a worthwhile income, you most likely will never get there.

Set your goals, know what you want to achieve, and be serious about it.

If you decide to buy into some franchise, it will literally cost thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Spending all this money, do you think it’s going to work for you if you spend only a few hours a week as and when you feel like it, working on your business? Or maybe you consider not getting any training? Or maybe you would just give it a try for a month or two, and if it doesn’t work, you’ll just quit.

I don’t think so. By investing a lot of money, you’ll make sure you commit yourself to that business. You will try to get all the training you possibly can, and you most definitely will follow any proven guide lines provided by the creator of the franchise. You will also plan properly and prepare yourself, so that you don’t just quit at the first obstacle you encounter.  

So what is different about your online business?

The fact that you can start your online business without a huge capital investment creates a pitfall or stumbling block to many potential entrepreneurs.

I am not saying you shouldn’t invest any money when you start your online business. If you have the capital available and you know what you are doing, you might have your business up and running so much faster.

What I am saying, is that if you don’t know what you are doing, it might be risky spending a lot of money. I am also saying that if you don’t have the money, there’s no need to go into debt and take all kinds of risks. That’s the positive side of an online business.

The danger is that when you don’t spend the money, you don’t take your business serious. When family or friends make bad remarks, or have de-motivating comments, it is easy to quit. People often tend to judge what you do by the amount of money you put into it. If you want to start your online business, don’t allow this to happen.

You will have to invest in your business anyhow. Although you can start your online business with little or even no money, you will have to invest time. Yes, as the saying goes; “the only place where success comes before work, is in the dictionary”. So you have to commit to your business. Treat it as a full-time business. If you still have a full-time job, block out certain times in the week (preferably on a daily basis) to commit to your business.     

Once you treat your online business as a serious business, you put in the effort and commit to its success; it will become a serious, full-time business.

Go to Part 2