Online Business 101:
The first step in owning a successful online business is having a product to sell. When it comes to what they make money on, online businesses are just like any other business. Brick and mortar, door to door, even Apple, they all have products. Your product does not have to be a physical good, or even a service. It can be a digital product like this eBook, a subscription to an online magazine, or a website template. If you already have a physical business, and you want to market it via sales funnels and online stores, don’t stop reading, because all of this information can be applied to get more customers.
Q: “I don’t have a product! Can I still have an online business?”
A: Yes! You have the most opportunity here than anyone! If you don’t already have a product to sell, decide if you want to sell physical products or digital. If you want to sell physical products, it will require a lot more of a business plan. You will have to connect with manufacturers and shipping companies etc. Or, you can make a digital product like the ones mentioned above. What the wealthiest online entrepreneurs sell is other people’s products. They market and close the sales for other companies products and receive heavy commissions.
To build an online business as automated as possible, you should consider selling a digital product. Digital products can be either made yourself, or you can sell others’ digital products and receive sometimes up to 50% commission. Many successful digital entrepreneurs go this route because they leverage brand names and most of the time the wholesaler (original seller of the product or copyright holder) helps you market the product. It is usually very cheap to become a partner with other online businesses and wholesalers. This online partnership is known as being an affiliate. You will hear that term often in the online business market.
The best online affiliate companies help entrepreneurs set up their online store, sales funnels, or marketing strategy. Some even give you a customizable website. The first thing you do to draw traffic to your website (get potential customers to visit your website), is to establish a social media presence. I will explain more on the social media marketing in the next chapter, but the purpose of social media is to direct traffic to your online store or sales funnel. Once the customer clicks the links from your social media, a new window will open with your custom sales funnel or online store. No matter
the insurance example, you want a video on how they will save money, or have peace of mind, not on the rates and different kinds of coverage you provide (not yet anyway). That first video is meant to draw their interest further into the meat and potatoes. The most effective funnels and storefront pages ask visitors for their email before continuing to the next page or for more information. Sound familiar? You know this works because you had to give me your email before receiving this eBook. My business is helping other people grow online businesses, and I required your email before you got this eBook. Why?
The best online businesses build an email list.
You can use those emails in many different ways. One of the most profitable is to use them on a sale by sale basis. You can email your potential customer and give them a personalized sales pitch if they did not buy the product to regain their interest and prove wrong any falsehoods they might have thought. Then you get the sale! One or two five minute emails is all it takes to close someone if you have a good product. Cha-Ching! $$$ Collecting email = money in your pocket. The second most profitable is building an email list and using that as a cross-selling market base.
Cross Selling is when you sell one customer multiple products. It is one of the easiest ways for an online business to be profitable. For most cases, you just want to start out by selling the customer one product, and then they receive an email a week or two later advertising for other products that would help the same kind of customer. Easy sales. Once you have built a list from your first business/online product, send out a generic email like the ones you receive in your inbox from online stores or even companies like Target or WalMart. You write a ten min email with a link to your new product to 100 people, 50 of them go to your sales funnel, and 30 of them buy your product. Online businesses are just averages. The more people that see your promotions (either paid ads or free marketing via social media) the more people see your site, the more that see your site, the more sales you get, the more sales you get, the more vacations, boats, cars, homes, jewelry, and expensive dinners you can have! Online business are most profitable when customers can understand the product and pay for the product all online. Here are some recommendations for systems that work well with building online businesses.
http://mailchimp.com/ - for emailing your email list
http://onlinegrowthsystems.com - for becoming as profitable as possible
https://drive.google.com - For free document storage and designing tools
http://blog.lemonstand.com/5-best-selling-digital-products-can-sell/ - for finding digital products to sell
http://www.alibaba.com/ - for finding physical products to sell
http://PayPal.com - for collecting digital payments
http://www.weebly.com/ - free multi paged websites
http://www.webs.com/ - free multi paged websites
https://www.godaddy.com/ - custom domain names
http://www.amazon.com/ - online retail platform
http://www.ebay.com/ - online retail platform
https://www.google.com/adsense/start/#?modal_active=none - pays for you to advertise on you site (for bloggers, etc.)
