How To Start An Online Business in 2008

This is by far the biggest one I hear over and over again, day in and day out by newcomers and many advanced marketers.

I know you want to start making money online and I know it’s hard to get started but if you have a step by step formula to follow it is much, much easier and very possible.

As I have already pointed out, one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people who want to start their own, profitable Internet business is a lack of business ideas.

What kind of business can you start? How do you create your own product? How can you resell branded products using a warehouse or drop shipper? Where do you find these products and drop shippers? And how on earth do you find out what to research?

YOU need to know where and what to look for!

VERY BIG TIP!!! A very important point here that many so called guru’s on the net will not tell you. To really make the big incomes we are going to talk about you must have something that can produce HIGH RETURNS for every cent you invest. Otherwise you will not get WEALTHY. You will not become an internet MILLIONAIRE if you just sit back on anything below 35% profit margins.

The last thing you want to do is spend a whole year of your life spending money on a business with zero profit or heaven forbid a loss.

There are a few ways to make money on the net but the two main categories when selecting what to sell;

INFORMATION or PRODUCTS

If you want to market products you can do so by selling someone else’s INFORMATION or their PRODUCT via affiliates that many set up via their own site or through http://www.clickbank.com/ for example. Others use wholesalers and reseller sites.

There are many out there who prefer the AFFILIATE route so they don’t have to bother with spending the time and effort to set up their own business or find ideas and niches themselves. WHY? This involves work.

In this case you will need to know how to get traffic and build your lists. If you want to spend less time on your business then this is the best method and it’s fairly easy to make money but you are limited and there may just be a whole lot of other people out there flogging the same horse.

The other way is to have your own INFORMATION or PRODUCT and build your own affiliate network. It’s tougher from the start but once you have that MOMENTUM you will notice the profits become greater and your effort less for more.

Imagine you are in your current job. Let’s say you are a salesperson who has targets to achieve each and every month. It’s tough as your targets are always getting put up just out of reach and unless you work 12 hours a day you have little chance of making target and collecting big bonus checks.

Now, think how much easier it would be if you have a hundred other sales people working for you and giving you qualified leads

They make all the calls, see all the clients and all you have to do is get them to sign your paper work. All for a small commission but only once the client has signed. Wow! That’s a big Wow!

What a great idea. Well, this is just how the affiliate works on the net but you can build them up to be in the thousands. I mean tens of thousands.

AND NO PRODUCT OF YOUR OWN

Many people think that to sell products themselves they need to invent some new way of making a wheel or they put in weeks or months of work to create an e-book that most people would never buy or even read.

INFORMATION or content would be information products which include e-books, DVDs, CDs, manuals, books, blogs, websites, ezines, newsletters etc.

BUT, if you want to make the most profit then having your own information or content or products is a must. Simply reselling another persons content or product is not enough and it has a definite life cycle.

In short, if you really want to sell other peoples products make sure they are closely related to your own and to the subjects of your blogs or newsletters. Otherwise you will not sell a thing and risk losing them as a subscriber. Remember the thought about integrity. Don’t just try to make money.

The most success will come from adding good products in a skillfully written email that makes you sound like their friend and gains their trust but only once you have given them something of value. If you don’t have their trust they will not buy.

A lot of brand new people to this business will have been to many a seminar telling them to simply resell someone else’s product and make millions within a year.

NOT SO MY FRIEND!

“RUBBISH” I hear you say. “I have seen the guys who do this at seminars and the proof of income.” Actually, I have also seen them all. I can name the successful ones on one hand. Yes, they are extremely hard working.

You can fail here very easily because… IT’S TOO EASY FOR OTHERS TO COPY. Once this happens your market is almost dead. You need to be at the top of the tree here.

There are also many sites out there that are offering you FREE websites all setup and ready to go. Got one? Well if you have then thousands of others have too. We will talk about niches in the next section where this will all come clear.

The Internet has huge opportunities to make lots of money in various ways with all types of info products and merchandise, but, like all things these will always need the most effort from YOU.

YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO WORK FOR THIS.

OK, so that covers a bit about Information products and as you have read it is hard work and it takes a lot of research to find that great content. If you choose just to be an also rand and copy all the ideas on the net without thinking about what it is that you are doing to help someone then your struggle will be an uphill one.

Let’s talk about PRODUCTS you can resell.

To make it clear this is what I would call stuff like cars, car parts, TV’s, Video players etc. Companies may include GM, Ford, and Panasonic etc. They all have their own great product that is as they say UNIQUE. Some try to sell them online too. But, the difference being that they are selling their own products. You will never see Panasonic selling a Phillips product in a Sony shop.

There are also many resellers out there that sell other peoples products. Wal-Mart in the US and Tescos in the UK are experts at selling other peoples products. They are true merchants or resellers. They buy at wholesale and sell at retail. The profit is the difference between the two.

Here are some more examples of merchants, ToyRUS, Sears, Kmart, Topshop, Next, Amazon and many, many more.

None of these actually make their own products. Some are branded but they don’t actually make them.

Confused? The thing to remember is that most of what’s being sold is being sold by people like us. Marketers, or in some cases you may call yourself a publisher, and not the actual manufacturer of the product.

In this case you don’t have to sit and think up a product, you don’t have to make a thing. What you can do is use a drop shipper so you don’t even have to store the products or buy them. Just like going to the store to buy something. You don’t pay until you buy.

You can make a lot of money with your own ecommerce store selling merchandise. They can be cheap and simple to set up.

WORD OF WARNING

When it comes to making money from your own ecommerce store, there is a very large threat to your success.

As you know there are a lot of so called genuine wholesalers out there and one of the biggest problems about this strategy to make money is;

WHERE DO I FIND A REAL TRUSTWORTHY WHOLESALER?

I can tell you that there are a few who make a lot of money doing this but a whole lot more who just get burned. And I mean burned.

WHY?

Because they use a wholesaler that they know very little about and one that has no credibility at all. In fact there are a lot of these, so how do you choose the right one.

Well I know a handful that I would trust but one in particular hits the top of the list. I’ll tell you in just a moment.

The people from Amazon, Wal Mart, Buy.com, etc. don’t make mistakes easily, and you can bet they have a great relationship with wholesalers that they trust.

Ultimately gives these guys the time to do what they do best of all MARKETING THE PRODUCTS.

Have you worked it all out yet?

The simple ingredients for starting your own business on the Internet are;

1.     You need a large LIST OF PEOPLE who are hungry for your product. Hungry for your niche and ready to pay for your solution

2.     You need a PRODUCT to sell whether this is your own or one that has been produced by someone else. This is temptation.

3.     You need to CONTACT these people in anyway you can. Using the Internet, including ezines, newsletters, classified ads, etc

4.     You need an initial OPT-IN offer to get them to hand over their names and email address.

5.     You need BACKEND products to increase your profit margins

6.     You also need to IMPROVE somebody’s LIFE

Like me you are always eager to get stuck into the information knowing you are going to learn something. This can lead you to miss out certain points that are very important. It’s a bit like watching a movie. The second and third time you always pick up on little things that make it even better.

You may have picked up on the fact that I am here to stay and I want the internet to start producing better quality products. Especially in the highly profitable area of digital products or information products.

There are two types of people who set up a business on the net.

Those that just want to sell sell sell no matter what the price. This is their number one focus. You know the newsletters you get always trying to get you to buy buy buy. Full of affiliates links. None of which has all that much quality content.

Then there is the type of person who wants to generate great content. They want to HELP solve those problems. They actually care about what they produce. This to me is making someone’s life a little bit better.

See how important it is to know your customers problems and how to solve them.

YOU NEED to think about what it is your  customers want. DO NOT ASSUME.

If you want to get rich, wealthy, financially free or how ever you want to state it then you must shift the FOCUS onto your consumer base. You will find that you will have people recommending friends, family and colleagues to you and your products.

Think of the real world of commerce. Think for a minute what would happen to Wal-Mart if they decided to start sell inferior products to all those millions of trusted consumers.

CONTENT IS KING… Heard that one a few times, right? What does it actually mean though? It means that you need to offer great information that is going to help solve peoples problems and keep them coming back for more. This is absolutely essential to your success.

Start writing THE BEST CONTENT on the net for your products.

Try giving it away for free too. You will be surprised what people will buy off you if they think the free content is great.

If you want to stand out from the crowd you simply must have the best content. This is the reason you need to think strongly about what product you are going to sell. If you are not interested at all in watches then ho ware you going to write about them.

You may be the best chef anyone knows. I bet you could get passionate about telling people how to cook a great steak.

You need to keep people who click on your site on your site as long as possible. You will only do this with amazing content. If you do this I promise you this;

 YOU WILL BE SUCCESSSFUL

The number one reason that you will fail in this business is that your content is rubbish. Once again, your content will either kill you or make you.

Repeat this 10 times to yourself….

KILLER CONTENT WILL MAKE ME RICH

Killer content can include, e-books, video/DVD, CD’s or audio, newsletters, blogs.

What else can you do to help you become successful?

Well as you have read it takes a combination of all the things you have read about. Hard Work and commitment is very important as too is courage and integrity. If you can answer yes to all these then you are on your way.

However, knowledge is key. You can get knowledge from all sorts of places including the library, internet, newspapers, TV, CD’s, Videos etc etc etc.

The greatest place to get HELP and KNOWLEDGE is from those that share a common passion and interest as you do. They are equally honest and equally committed to great content and serving the consumer.

Where do you find these people? At seminars, on blogs, on the PHONE, in person. Lunch, dinner, breakfast, and virtually anywhere you want. You just have to contact them.

These people are your friends.

These friends will accelerate you to an enormous income and an incredible contact base. (You know how important a trusted list is)

By the way, do not buy lists that are randomly advertised. This is your fast track to getting spammed)

Ok, before I go on about FRIENDS, I need to make sure you understand what your essentials are for starting an internet business;

1. You must have GREAT CONTENT

2. You must have TRAFFIC

4. You must have INCOMING LINKS

4. You will need AFFILIATES  

 5. You must RESEARCH

6. You must TEST and act on the results

 7. You need a list of OPT-Ins to create you LIST of customers  

8. TRUST in the market place.

9. KNOWLEDGE about your product and your consumer

10. SURVEY to get to know your consumers

11.BLOGS to create traffic organically

12. SEO for on and off page. Be nice to Google

Yes, that is a big post but I felt it was time you at least new the basics behind an online business and what you need to start and become a success.

To your success

Ashley Banfield   http://www.onlinebusinessmarketer.com/