Friday, 18 May 2012
Guide to Online Business Startup
Step-By-Step Guide For Your Successfull Business Startup
Got a good idea & thinking of starting a business to make money with it, then this free Guide to Your Online Business Startup
is just what you need to turn your dream into a reality.
In fact even if you do not have an idea that you think will work, don't worry because in this step-by-step guide to setting up a successful &
profitable online business you will also be shown how to find an idea that will work.
So without further ado let's start on setting up your new online business...
6 Steps to Starting a Simple "$100 a Day" Online Business
This is exactly the same simple method that I use & have used for my business startups that generate well in excess of $100 a day.
In fact the heading is a little misleading because with this online business model you could end up making much more than $10,000 a month
or, on the other hand, you may struggle to get $100 a month - the point is if you stick to this formula you should have no trouble
making at least $100 a day.
Name Your Business - Develop Your Brand
If you don't already have a business name you need to come up with a memorable name that can accurately convey what
your business stands for & one that can be developed into your brand.
Once you've decided on your name check to see that it is available to use as your domain name as well & if it is make sure you
register your business name with the Company Names Registrar & register your domain name with a reputable registrar online.
By doing this you creating value in terms of branding & intellectual property rights.
- How to come up with a snappy & appropriate business name?
You may be lucky & just come up with a name that feels right, but if that doesn't happen you'll need to research an appropriate name
which can be done by conducting a survey or by asking friends & colleagues for their suggestions.
Another good technique is to brainstorm by listing the type of emotions you want you market to feel when hearing your name - from there
you can extract related words & phrases which you can mess around with until you come up with something exciting.
Avoid restricting yourself, in terms of a geographical reference for example, as you may expand in the future or change your focus slightly
which could damage your brand identity.
- So what makes a great business name?
A great, memorable name will make someone pause & consider it - it could be a name that rolls easily off the tongue
& represents your business activities in a clever way.
It should also be appropriate for your target market - for instance a rapper type name may not be suitable for an accounting business
which targets the financial sector.
At the end of the day, whatever name you decide on start promoting it enthusiastically as this is the first step in building your brand’s identity
which can develop into something of real value in the long run.
- Create a Logo
Whilst we're talking about your business'name & building your brand, don't forget you will also need an eye catching logo
that can be associated with your business' products & services.
Designing a really professional looking one can be difficult, but don't worry there's a link below where you'll be able to get a free
one created.
- Useful Resources
Set Up an Online Presence
Whilst you don't have to have your own website or blog to make money online (you can do it just with PPC campaigns which can cost a significant
amount of moolah if you're not experienced) I recommend you do set up your own online presence as it can grow in reputation & integrity
over time - not to mention wealth.
It is also for this reason that you should not make use of a free blogging resource or other online platform as their TOS (Terms of Service)
could change at any time leaving you up the creek (without a paddle) - they've also been known to shut down overnight leaving you not only with
no web presence but you would also lose all the work & value that you would have put into it.
So not using the free options is a must - it also ensures that you have control over your website or blog which can grow into a wealthy
asset that can be sold for a healthy some of dosh at some time in the future - in other words over time it can become a brand worth something.
Ok enough of the waffling and on to setting up your web presence.
- Register a Domain Name
The very first thing you need to do is to research a good domain name (or a few at least as they're cheap & usually
appreciate in value over time) and then register it.
Register any name that has anything to do with a business that you think could be viable - they won't go to waste - I've built sites around
names that I had registered years previously that have gone on to become quite nice earners.
In my opinion do not go for a free option as not only are they not very memorable, but you don't have any control over them -
they won't build any value in intellectual property for you either - again, your own domain name becomes your brand that could grow into significant value.
So get your domain name registered with a reputable domain name registrar like
Go Daddy where you can research & choose the domain names
most appropriate for your business.
- Set Up Your Blog or Website
First of all a blog is really just another name for a website but it is far more versatile, seo friendly as well as user friendly.
And in my opinion the best way of going about this is to set up a wordpress blog as not only will you not require any
knowledge to do with HTML or CSS or PHP or other coding stuff associated with building your own websites, but a wordpress blog has many
advantages over the conventional HTML website.
Wordpress blogs can be easily structured to be extremely SEO friendly, with automatic pinging of new posts to masses
of directories, automatic sitemap generators as well as automatic updating of them everytime there is a new psot or change.
With the masses of wordpress plugins available it is also possible to upload Amazon stores integrated with your own affiliate code and so on.
So if you're sold on setting up a wordpress blog then lets focus on that for now.
- Host Your Blog
This is another facet that you need to attend to to get your online presence finally set up.
There are so many webhosting options to choose from & almost as many horror stories of unscrupulous webhosting companies
shutting down overnight leaving their clients without a service, email or websites - all wiped out overnight & believe me it
does happen - I know because I was a victim of this & it took me not only months to recover but also lost me huge amounts of
money in downtime while I was reinstating my sites & blogs.
Since that fateful day I have had my online presence handled without any glitches.
Not only has there been no downtime to even talk about but the support has been fantastic - all it takes is an email - no logging into your
account & then submitting a support ticket or suchlike.
Furthermore the features & benefits that come with this
hosting package are too numerous to list here but the one that you will be interested in is that once you have signed up for this
hosting package here
(from as little as $4.95 for a single domain or $7.95 which includes unlimited domains, unlimited discspace & bandwidth, shopping carts, etc)
you get access to many scripts, templates etc but you also have the option of uploading a free Wordpress script to your domain name.
All you need to do is log into your cPanel account then go to Fantastico & select Wordpress & then install it into your main directory.
This takes no more than a few minutes & once it's done you'll be emailed with your login details which you can use to go
to the admin section of your Wordpress blog where you can choose the theme you want, make new posts and so much, much more.
Also if you really want the traditional website from which to market your business,
this hosting package from Hostgator
also offers many professionally designed templates from which you can choose, modify & upload to your domain.
- Resources for Your Online Presence
Find a Smoking Hot Idea For Your Business
Many online businesses simply don't get to pass "go" because the idea that it's based on is usually too general & in an
over-competitive market which means too much competition.
-
So whilst your idea needs to be in a niche where there is a certain amount of demand, too much & it means that you'll be
competing with the heavy internet hitters & everyone else & you'll struggle to get your blog ranked anywhere
near a decent position in the search engines.
This unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you see it) plays a vitally important part in the role of any online business'
success.
- Therefore getting your blog to rank well in the SERPS (Search Engine Pages Results) for popular keyword phrases in
your niche is a lot
easier said than done.
For instance with this site it took a not inconsiderable amount of work & savvy to rank at #4 in Google
(currently at #4, sometimes at #1)
for the keyword phrase "maximize adsense earnings" which I'm sure you'll agree would be quite a popular & competitive keyword.
- The point is that with a decent amount of work. commitment & internet marketing smarts you can rank well for reasonably hot
keyword phrases but it won't happen automatically.
You will definitely help your cause with some reputable
Niche Marketing Software
as provided for in this package.
So getting back to your idea, what you need to do is position your business idea in a lesser known niche that has a significant
amount of keen buyers but not too much competition - sounds easy but it does require a fair bit of research which is worth it if you
find a goldmine of a niche.
- Resources for Finding the Perfect Idea For Your Business
How to Monetize Your Blog
Ok now we're getting to the juicy part - the part where you get your blog configured to start generating some of that lovely passive income.
- Advertising Revenue
One of the most popular ways of getting your website or blog to generate a steady income is to place paying advertisements on it.
These can be in the form of banner ads, text links or Adsense type of ads.
Adsense has proven to be one of the most effective ways of generating advertising revenue - some publishers make well in excess
of $10,000 a month just from this.
To find out more about this read up on how you can
Maximize Your Adsense Earnings here »
- Affiliate Marketing
This is arguably the most popular & effective way of making money from a blog - in fact many of the top internet marketers
rely solely on affiliate marketing for making their online fortunes.
Affiliate marketing is in essence selling other people's products & services for a commission & is an especially
effective money maker on blogs of all sizes - especially once your blog has an engaged & loyal readership it can really start making money.
You could obviously sell your own products but you would then have the onus of creating them first.
Whatever you do, it is wise to stick with digital products and/or services as they can be downloaded easily enough which does away with
any shipping hassles.
There are many digital products (infoproducts, ebooks, software, etc) which you can choose from that will complement your business niche that you can recommend &
sell from your blog.
To locate suitable products (there are many useless, spammy digital products out there so do your research well before recommending
anything as your reputation could be damaged) you will first need to sign up as an affiliate with any of the
popular & reputable affiliate networks below;
Once you've done that you will be able to choose products that will have their links embedded with your affiliate ID in them so
that when you place them in your blog posts you will be credited with the commission for any sales resulting in a click through
from your link.
Just go to the following link to read up more on
Affiliate Marketing here »
- Add Other Income Streams to Your Blog
Whilst advertising & affiliate marketing are probably the 2 biggest online earners, you could always market your own skills or
areas of personal epertise from your blog.
For instance if you are a web designer you could have your design portfolio on your blog & invite anyone who is interested in
your services to contact you.
Or any business form a delivery service to a law firm - a blog or website could be the ideal way of marketing these services.
So your business idea could be for a venture that is an offline one but the online facet is where you will be able to advertise & monetize it.
Don't forget that you can also create your own info products in the form of ebooks & sell them online.
- Resources for Adding profitable Income Streams to Your Blog
Traffic & Marketing
Build it and they will come - believe that & you'll believe anything.
Unfortunately whilst your blog may look very professional & it may be structured with the right keywords, text,
headings and so on, this alone won't bring floods of traffic rushing to your site.
So while you should not neglect ensuring that the content, tags and so on are all SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly
& properly optimized, what really gets a blog cooking is compelling content, popularity & backlinks.
These can be found (or created) in a number of ways as follows;
- Content
Your content needs to be original, interesting & of value to the reader - if you can achieve this you will get
repeat visitors & the word will spread.
- Article Marketing
This is a great way to get direct links to your site as well as a way to build link integrity.
With every article you submit, you have the opportunity of adding an appropriate link to your blog in the resource box.
Furthermore the anchor text in the link should be well thought out to add to the banklink integrity.
For instance if your blog is about dog training, you may have written an article about certain training methods
& in your resource box you could add something like:
The author, who is an expert dog trainer with years of experience, is willing to reveal more
Specific Dog Training Methods here for free.
This is vitally important for you to get the most mileage out of the articles you write which could also be syndicated
& go viral which will provide you with a multiplier effect in terms of getting site visitors & backlinks.
Whilst there are many article directories you can submit to, the most popular are these ones;
- RSS Feeds
Burning a feed for your blog is an extremely important factor in getting site visitors & backlinks.
Furthermore having your RSS feed plastered all over the net & submitted to feed aggragators is an ideal way of getting
links to your blog on other sites all over the net - for free.
3 Easy Steps to Create Your Feed With Feedburner (a Google Application)
- Go to feedburner.com, login or create an account & click "Create"
- Enter the URL (website address) of your Wordpress blog into the box where it says "Burn a feed right this instant" & click "next."
- Then once your feed has been burned just follow the instructions to Analyze, Optimize, Publicize & Monetize it
This shouldn't take much more than 5 minutes to do whereupon you'll have an awsome RSS feed of your blog.
Feedburner also provides you the option of creating a chicklet (RSS Icon) of your choice, which is an RSS Feed button which can be placed
into the sidebar of your blog.
This can be done by dragging a text widget into the sidebar area where you'll be able to paste the html code for the RSS Button
that was created by the feedburner chicklet chooser.
Once you've done that close the box & save the changes by clicking the "Save" button or "Update File" depending on
which version of Wordpress you're using.
This is another huge benefit of using a Wordpress blog for your online presence - all the updates & pinging thereof will
be taken care of for you.
- Social Networking
As Social Marketing seems to be the favorite pastime of the internet user it has to be one of the biggest sources
of great, highly targeted traffic.
You therefore need to become active by creating accounts for yourself with these 5 Top Social Networking Sites
(just for starters as there are many, many more) that you've probably heard of;
In conclusion Social Media & Marketing is an extremely important weapon in the bloggers arsenal
that you should know how to use for maximum effect.
- Participating in Forums & Blog Commenting
Whatever business niche you're in, you'll find that there are internet marketers & other bloggers
active in forums and other active online communities.
To find the forums to do with your niche just do a search for "your niche keyword" + "forums" & you'll
be served up with a whole list of industry specific forums that you can start getting involved in.
What you need to do is to sign up with a few popular, credible forums & offer advice and so on & once
you've built up a bit of credibility you will start getting backlinks & site visitors via the link in
your forum signature.
Also commenting on other industry specific blogs is another way of getting extra traffic.
- Yahoo Answers
Assuming you're a bit of expert in your chosen niche you may want to impart some of that expert knowledge
to the Yahoo Answers community.
This is an excellent way of getting highly targeted traffic to your site.
What you need to do is get a Yahoo account & then head over to
http://answers.yahoo.com/ where you'll be able to browse all
open questions & search for appropriate questions by category & then start answering them.
Below the "Your Answer" window is a "" window where you can leave your blog's URL as a reference - you can paste it
into the answer window but it could be seen as spam & you'll be reported as violating the Answer's TOS &
a few of those & your account will be closed.
Also your URL won't be clickable until you've accumulated enough points to reach Level 2.
The Money Is In the List
What this means is that you need to build up a loyal list of subscribers & shoot regular emails off to them which promote
the latest hot products to them & generally result in a decent amount of sales & revenue for you.
The effectiveness of these email campaigns not only depends on the quality of the email, but also on the software you use to send them.
How it should work is like this;
- Everytime a visitor comes to your blog they should be exposed to a sign up form to be kept abreast of the latest
developments in your business'niche.
The chances are that they will want to receive your emails so they should be encouraged to signup via a simple signup process -
usually just requiring their first name & email address.
- If you have decent autoresponder software (a must by the way), it will do all the work for you so that when your site visitor
signs up, the software will capture their details into the database & automatically send them a confirmation that needs
to be responded to to ensure that the signup has legitimately opted in to your email list.
- Once that is done the software should send a welcome mail to the signup explaining what they've signed up for & providing
appropriate links to pages & products.
- After the welcome email has been sent, your auto responder software should allow you to have the
pre-loaded & written emails to start getting sent off at regular
intervals (usually a few days apart) to the new signup automatically - so it's important to ensure that the software enables you to
be able to accomplish this.
- Obviously you wouldn't want to send mails off to a list of multiple recipients without them being addressed
individually & so on.
Believe me as your list grows, you need intelligent software to automate this task for you otherwise
it'll be neglected & you will losing out on a huge chunk of potential income.
The only software that I know of (& that I can recommend) that can accomplish all of the above
(and that is used by most of the online gurus) is Aweber Autoresponder Software.
I suggest you head on over to Aweber
where you will not only find out how it can benefit your business, but you will also be able to test it out for free.
