Genuine Business Planning for Online Selling
© David Newton
3/25/08
As it stands there are lots of business opportunities in the online world. Plus I've seen a lot of friends I know go to seminars about making money on the internet - only to come back to the "house hold reality" that if they were to "follow their passion" AKA make money from their hobbies online - Very few seem to realize that they need to make it a VIABLE business from doing just such a thing.
Yes, it is true, you can create your own products to sell online and make a very good income.
But few understand that those who are making a great online income are infact doing so with a solid business plan in the process.
How To Turn Your Hobby Into An Online Business
1. Search closely for examples of other businesses that may emulate what you wish to do. Hey, you know there maybe a business out there that is similar to what you want to do already. That's great. Look closer first, are they really making money from it? And if so, how is that being done?
2. Your Online Business Needs A Good Foundation For Success
If you are only selling other people's products, its fair to ask, how can you do that and what can you make doing it? You need to "quantify" exactly what you desire to make, and how this is achieved.
3. Write a “Marketing Plan" for your business
Sadly, many online marketers don't do a marketing plan. They tinker with this traffic generating idea, than play with another one, nonchalantly killing time in the process - before they know it, its Christmas Time again! And they have little in results to show for what they did the whole year. Don't be flippant, write a plan, table what you'll do and when, then carry out your marketing plan.
4. Learn From Your Web Stats Package
All websites have a stats package. This is the exact stuff you need to be familiar with if you want to succeed (or fail) online. Here's what it can tell you;
• How many unique visitors your site gets
• What keywords (and "key phrases" more importantly) they used to find you
• What pages where the most popular
• How long they viewed your website
• Where they came from (the ip addresses)
• What were they best days or weeks of the year
• How long it took for your new web pages to be indexed online
If you have standard Control Panel 11 package you'll be able to see stats on "AW Stats" and Webalizer are great to learn from.
5. Learn To Use A Spreadsheet
One of the quickest ways to see how profitable (or not) your new website is going to be is via the keen use of a spreadsheet. This shouldn't come as a surprise, but to be real, I'm often greeted by a "Gee that sounds practical David" by people who turn up at my internet marketing breakfast meetings.
Find out, what it costs you to make a sale, what number of sales you need to break even, what product categories are best on a dollar for return basis, best for you to promote and how much it costs to run the business.
It maybe a shock to some of you, the internet is just a business. Treat it with respect, and it will take on a new meaning for you. You're not playing with a poker machine here. It is a real business.
6. It Takes Real Qualified Traffic To Get A Result
I've seen many internet marketers give up working on their website after putting up only one Blog and one lead capture page. Then they sit back and do almost nothing for months.
In reality it takes hundreds of pages online to get a real result from an internet business. Many lead capture optin pages and even lots of hover-popover pages.
Building a database takes a bit of hard &#@%**%$& Yakka! Often this knowledge is missed out from the internet guru's advice and the newbie struggles to wonder why it's not working for them.
I've seen some marketers sit patiently waiting for the website they do have to 'suddenly come to life' - if it ever does in a hope their efforts were not in vein or that by doing nothing they don't have to admit they were wrong about the approach they took.
7. Inbound Links What Does It Take?
Yes, it is true you do need inbound links to your website. Again here's where the newbies are often mislead. They have a "scattergun approach" to their marketing here too.
In my very early days, I would have a goal of not going to bed until I got about 2 or 3 links to my site each night. I researched out various relationship and dating speakers / writers and related businesses in my own field.
It took me my first year in the business to create hundreds of links to my website that were of some value. By the end of the year 2000 I had genuine traffic coming from many valid sources on the web that delivered me my quality traffic that I needed to create dating sign-ups.
By 2001, all that hard work paid off big time for me. Because when I began placing ads in the classifieds and appearing in the media, people searched for me online and... Well I was "everywhere"!!!!
8. Product Dollar Values
Amazingly someone never told the newbies about how many widgets you need to sell to buy this week's groceries and to pay the rent.
OK so what's the reason you're selling a $27 product?
How many did you sell last week huh?
Yeah, pretty depressing isn’t it? That's why you need to have a spread of dollar values in your product suite.
OR
You need a product that has Repeat Sales Value.
I'm in the online dating arena, as such most of my clients are repeat buyers known as monthly "auto-renewals" in my business. I get from between as low as 35% to as high as 110% in commissions each month from my clients. So even if its a $19.95 sale chances are they'll either repeat buy or maybe renew their membership later even if its months away, I've still got them for years.
Now this may not be the case say with eBooks, but if that's what you're doing, make sure it has a defined plan for FINANCIAL VIABILITY. Or your efforts could be in vein.
Some of the products I promote are higher end training courses. You guessed it, with my lists I can do a promo and scoop up sales just with a few emails for products that are going to net me hundreds of dollars in commissions. I'm still amazed at where these clients come from. But again, without a list, it would be hard to get these same results sitting about with one single sales page all on its own.
9. Hang Around The Movers and Shakers
When I started out I was fortunate to get a leg up from a couple of guys working 16hour days on their dating site. Two years later they both cashed in their chips for millions. You know they still taught me a lot. The ideas they had always seemed crazy to me. But so were the results. Often an idea sounds crazy until somebody cashes in a check for millions and then you find yourself saying their ideas were quite sound.
10. Selling Is A Numbers Game
Whatever you’re doing on the internet, it’s all about sales. And sales is “a numbers game”. That’s why you need lots of pages, lots of sign-ups to your newsletter, lots of emails sent out and a lot of hours to get it all started. Then you’ll need also lots of websites and domains too.
On any given day, I’m getting signups as I sleep, sales while I’m awake and asleep, plus thousands of unique visitors, page views and making lots of dollars. I still work at it, even though it makes me a good income. I’m also still learning and applying new ideas or doing things I procrastinated on doing earlier…lol
I love going to cafes during the day and writing newsletters and articles just like this one. Comparing this work to what I was doing a few years ago, even a bad day here is always a lot better than a good day back at the old work I used to be in. I can tell you, it’s worth the effort to get to semi-retirement. If you apply yourself.
David Newton runs a successful web based business online. Learn more about what he does online at: www.DavesOnlineWorld.com - Plus see his successful relationships and dating site www.SimplySolo.com - to understand the full background of this article.
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