Is Starting Your Small Business Online The New Black?

Online Literacy - A 'Must Have' Skill for Starting Your Small Online Business

Everyone used to be educated in the 3Rs.  Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic once upon a time was enough to get you a job for life.

But there is no such thing as a job for life today.  So what can you do to prepare yourself for our dramatically changed conditions?

Today a 4th skill is required if you want to be sure of maintaining your financial independence.  Today's 'must have' skill is Online Literacy. 

Internet Business Set-Up - Progress is Haphazard

Internet Business Set up Can be Haphazard

Follow progress on my internet business which teaches others how to start their small business online.

For those of you who have not visited us before, I am putting together an online business.  The business will teach others to do th sane using ebooks, online courses, video, audio and offline seminars.  Our goals is to help get 1,000 small business up and running in the next five years.

Oh, and to:

• boost my potential pension using e commerce and
• describe my progress and help me get things in order in my own mind.

I was trying to find a word that would describe progress so far and I have to say that haphazard does not go far wrong.  It is not that I haven't been working hard - every hour of the day is spent either thinking about the business or doing something in relation to it.

It is just that there are so many things you have to do when you set up a new online business.  They all seem to need to be done at the same time, and as you do one thing, you are reminded that you should be doing something else.  Also, so much of what you do is related and you need to make the links as you go, or you are likely to forget them.

The good thing about that is much of what you do or write can be used more than once.  A web page can be re-written and circulated as an online or offline article, a blog can become part of your sales materials, a sales page can be updated to be a new web-page.

I though I would run through what I should have done by now, what I have done and work out what needs to be done this week

Know What Your Market Is

So far I have got a very clear idea of what market I want to be in.  This market is made up of people who want to learn to make money online.

Know What Your Niche Is

I also know exactly what my niche is and I have set up all my goals with this in mind.  My niche  is made up of  people who have possibly not thought of starting this kind of business before.

These people may not be natural e-ntrepreneurs perhaps, but they have been pushed into starting an online business by current financial circumstances.

Know What Your Business Model Is

There are as many ways of running a business online as there are offline.  In my free course course I will be describing four business  'models' (apologies for the jargon), and I will be combining three of them in my own new business.    The four models and I will be combining them in my own new business.

 The four models we describe are:

1. Affiliate Business
2. Drop Shipping
3. Start Your Online Business
4. Your Offline Business Online

Start Communicating

It can take a long time to get noticed on the web, so the sooner you start the better.  I have got my web-site up and running and written 12 pages of content.  However, it is best ot wait until you have 30 pages or more before submitting the site to the search engines, so there is a while to go yet.

It is also good to get as many incoming links as possible before submitting to the search engines for the first time.  To try and achieve this, one of the things I am doing is creating useful links from this blog to  various pages on my web site.

I Can See Clearly Now

OK, well that has clarified that what I need to do this week is frantically write pages for our website and compliment them with articles and blog entires that are linked to the website.

If anyone out there has got a good suggestion as to where else I should try and get links from, let me know - I will be very grateful.

Make Money Online With Your Offline Business

Make Money Online 
Double your profits by putting your offline business online.  Read here for free information on putting your business online

Put Your Business Online

You have your own offline business and you would like to expand. Going online has many advantages and disadvantages:

What are the Pros and Cons?

Pros

• You don't have to get new premises.
• It gives you access to a world-wide market, rather than just anyone within the vicinity of the off-line business.
• Lower costs.
• 24/7 opening.  If you business is offline, you can usually only operate for 8 of those 24 hours, and 5 of those 7 days.
• You can sell your products and/or services through affiliates.
• You can sell affiliate or drop shipping goods as well as your own range if you want to.

Cons

• You have to learn a whole new way of marketing.
• You have to learn about a whole load of online technical matters you have never had to deal with before.

 Who Might Want to Take Their Own Online Business? 

Those who might want to take their own online business include business owners who:

• Want to expand, but don't have enough capital to do it offline.
• Want to experiment with different products, services and ways of doing business.
• Want to reach a much more varied customer base.
• Increase the return from their current investment in time, effort and learning.

 What you have to Consider

There are several things you have to consider:

• Will the online business be a copy of the offline business or something different?
• Is there a market for it online?
• Can your suppliers cope with any potential increase in demand?
• How will the actual process operate?
• What sort of payment system and/or shopping cart and will you put on your site?
• How will you put your site together and get it online? DIY or GSI (Get Someone In)?
• How will you bring your customers to the site (marketing)?
• What price are similar products / services are being sold for online?
• Can you sell enough to achieve your required income?
• Is the quality of your products / services high enough?

 Work Out How the Process Will Operate (The Business Model)

When starting your own business, you will need to work out exactly what has to happen between your customer ordering your goods and your customer receiving your goods. Unhappy customers are dangerous weapons, and you don't want any of them pointed at you!

Below is a very simple example of a work-flow process. Start with your customer's actions and walk through everything that has to happen in order for the customer to receive their goods quickly and in good condition.

  Work out How You Will Bring Your Customers to the Site and Keep them Coming Back

Online marketing will be where you have to put the most effort for your internet business.

Considerations:

Some of the things you will have to manage to make sure your online business is successful are:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or getting customers to your site for nothing.
• E-mail marketing.
• Audio / video Seminars.
• Sales (squeeze) pages.
• Using Social Media including blogs.
• Building links.

 These are just a few of the areas you will have to work on when building your online business. Even if you can afford to outsource from the beginning, it is vital you have helped to design the marketing plan and are able to detail it to others who may be working with you.

Set Up the Website and/or Blog
You may be able to outsource the design of your website and/or blog. However, if you are not don't worry. Many Internet Service Providers supply a range of free website templates with a range of fairly simple editing tools if you buy their internet services.

It is also possible to get a free website and even free hosting. Watch out for a surfeit of adverts though!

Remember, if you don't like the sound of this, you can get information about three other ways of setting up your business online cheaply in other blogs:

     Affiliate Marketing                      Drop Shipping                                       Putting Your Business Online

 And through My Business Coach Online

Get our free 5 part introduction to becoming an affiliate.


 If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples: 

• How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse?
• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.

Make Money Online With Very Little Financial Investment

No Money? No Problem
Make money online from home. Read for 4 free different ways you can earn money online.

Affiliate Marketing
The first thing I should say is that if you want a free short introductory course to Affiliate Marketing, get it here.

Amazon is credited with creating the affiliate market and since most people are familiar with Amazon, I will use them as an example to explain the concept.

Amazon has a wide range of goods and services for sale. Even an organisation as big as them would have difficulty marketing everything they sell .

Instead they allow you to market their goods for them.

Lets say your greatest interest in life was bird watching. You could set up a blog about bird watching that other interested people would like to read. You mention various bird watching books throughout the site and each mention contains a link to Amazon.

You are not selling the books. You are getting people so interested in the books that they go and look at Amazon's site. If they click through to the Amazon site from your, like the product and buy, you make commission. This is really a win-win situation.

The seller gets a whole lot of free marketing and pays nothing unless they get a sale.

You get the opportunity to earn money from your hobby/interest.

The person searching on the internet gets to know a lot about the product and why they should be interested in it before they even get to the bookshop.

What are the Pros and Cons?

What are the pros and cons of building an online business rather than an affiliate business or a drop ship business?

Pros
You:

• Can find out if you have the drive to make money online without investing a lot of your capital.
• Can work out where your best market is.
• Sell what you are passionate about. 
•  Manage a business without having to manage staff, premises etc. 
• Earn an extra income by working from home.

Cons

You personally:

• Must do all the research involved
• Decide what products/ services to invest in
• Give up some of your leisure time.   

Who Might Want to Build An Income From Affiliate Marketing?
Anyone who:

• Don't know much about any sort of business but want to learn.
• Just want a bit of extra income.
• Haven't got too much money to splash around. 
• Wants to take a bit more control over their life.
• Has lost their job, savings or investment.

How Does it Work?
Once you have decided what particular area you would like to make money online from (and we will cover look at niches in detail later) there are basically three steps to take:

• Sign Up: Sign up for the programmes or products that most interest you.
• Market: Create a way to market that product – for example a website, a blog, e-mail marketing, forum posting, a Facebook page etc.
• Monetize your Site.  Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat (sorry cats and cat lovers), there is more than one way to earn money from your site. Make sure you have checked them all out and have a strategy that will get the site earning the most money, without putting visitors off.

Affiliate Agencies
There are many 'affiliate agencies' where you can sign up and decide on one product or a range of products you want to become an affiliate for.

The agency provides the link between the vendor of the product and the affiliate (you) and takes care of all the admin. They give you a personalised link for each product you are interested in. You create a way of marketing that product (for example a blog) and put the link on the blog.

Agencies can make life easier because through them you can set up your program, sell as many of their products as possible and have it all laid out for you on one site.

Independent Programmes

Independent Affiliate Programmes are run by many large companies including Amazon who are sometimes credited with creating the affiliate market.

Are There Limits to the Affiliate Business?

If you come across a product or service that you would love to be an affiliate for, but they have no programme, don't worry.

A lot of people who are out there selling things on the net have not even heard of affiliate programmes, but that does not mean you can't become an affiliate for them.

Contact the owner of the business and ask them if they will sign up with an affiliate agency so that you can become an affiliate for them. It takes a few minutes for them and it is a win-win situation.

Research, Research, Research
 Like everything else connected with the internet, please make sure that you do your own research and do it carefully. You will have to hand over a certain amount of sensitive information so a method of payment can be set up, therefore research is vital.

We do not recommend one affiliate programme over another, but I will never mention a programme if I know anything bad about it,

However, if you have decided to go with a programme that has not been mentioned in our materials, we would love you to go to our forum and let others know what you think. Or just go there and join in any conversation that interests you!

 Do I Have to Pay to Join an Affiliate Programme?

Another question that often comes up is in two parts. The first is whether you have to pay to join an affiliate programme. The answer is that you do not with most affiliate programmes. Most of them are free to join. They make their money from a share of the commission when items are sold.

 The second part of the question is, if an affiliate does charge, should you pay to belong to it. My feeling is that you should not. There are so many free programmes available from good organisations that it seems strange that any programmes should be set up where you have to pay to belong to them. Reading some of the descriptions, you might think it worth paying because the returns appear to be so good, but there are two things to keep in mind.

• You still have to do the work to market the product / service – if it sells itself, why do they need affiliates?
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

At My Business Coach Online we offer information about three other ways of doing business online, and you can read about them on later blogs:

Drop Shipping,          Starting Your Online Business                    Put Your Offline Business Online  

Remember you can get a free introductory short course to affiliate marketing here.

Is This All I Can Do?
If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples:

• How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse
• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

 The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.

Starting a New Online Business

If it is true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks I am in trouble.  Arthritic, smelly, fur falling out all over the place and four-legged I might not be, but transister radios were cool when I was a teenager.  Yup, I am that old - I can even vaguely remember the Beatles the first time round!

I am comfortable with the world wide web, I know how to use most of the programmes on my computer; I even know how to use all the apps on my mobile phone.  So I feel fairly comfortable with new technology.  But not with nechworking (a little word I came up with to describe the technology of online networking). 

Why am I bothering you might ask yourself.  I am bothering because I intend to plunge into the icy internet pool  and start a business online.