Do you know what a payment gateway is? Do you understand what affiliate marketing is and how to build your team? Can you set up a squeeze page to capture leads? Do you know the steps to launch a product and profit? Have you installed Google Analytics tracking code on your website? Do you have a reliable hosting service?
If the above questions sound like a foreign language to you then it's likely you have not yet dabbled with building an online business.
Curiosity And Competence Is Key
Most entrepreneurs have a desire to produce solutions to peoples' problems. They have an innate curiosity as to why things work like they do, why people struggle with stuff and how they can provide a solution to issues and challenges that will make them money at the same time.
You need to be curious and willing to learn if you're going to build an online business. You need to understand the fundamentals of setting up a website, a blog, social media sites, a way to track your efforts, a sales funnel, a way to get paid and a way to protect yourself.
When your entire business exists online it can be taken away in an instant if you haven't made the right provisions to protect yourself. All that hard work gone unless you've got yourself set up on the right tools to keep your intellectual property in your own hands and backed it all up.
Running an online business is an entirely different beast to your traditional bricks and mortar. Even though the same fundamentals apply such as timeless marketing principles, sales funnels and excellent customer service, nothing will prepare you for the steep learning lesson you're about to embark on. You need to be competent at learning and applying your skills to really make your online world rock.
But enough of this heavy, scary stuff. Let's talk about the positives.
The Benefits Of Building An Online Business
We are all put on this earth for a reason right? Mine is to have fun while running a business I love and making a HUGE impact on other entrepreneurs lives. I want people to love what they do and do it really well.
I also think there is no life better living than one of freedom in business and adventure in life. That's my philosophy on life and so far it's treated me well. I don't know many people who sign up for a life of 80+ hours per week of work that leaves them stressed out, depressed and without purpose.
Nope, most of us want to have a reason to live that makes us feel on purpose and playing a bigger role in the world. I think you'll find that having your own online business is all about the freedom to do what you want from anywhere in the world and make money while helping others.
- Incredibly low start up and entry costs compared to a traditional business or franchise.
- Flexibility to set your own schedule and work full or part time
- High earning potential in a relatively short amount of time.
Let me paint you a picture.
You wake up in the morning free to do your own thing. If you're feeling creative you will start writing, painting, cooking, producing, building and feeling productive and fulfilled.
If you wake up in super effective mode you will bang out that proposal, chapter of your book, sales policy, email newsletter, sales page, joint venture agreement or white paper.
If you feel less than your normal inspired self you may head to the gym, do some yoga, or read a book over a hot cup of herbal tea. No office to get to, traffic to sit in or people to please. Or perhaps just get on to the admin stuff you've been putting off.
This is your business remember. You can run it how you see fit.
How To Build Your Online Business
You want to run it well though. Beyond well. Like a well oiled machine. Online businesses have the ability to run 24 hours a day and 7 days a week so you want to milk that! You on the other hand don't have to work like that.
Send one email and make hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Launch a new service and make more in 1 day than you used to in one month. Package your hard earned knowledge into an evergreen product that you produce once but pays you back over and over.
Yes this is possible. This is my world. This is the lifestyle that plenty of others have set up too. Along the way we've learned the hard way about how to not launch a product, how to protect ourselves from our website crashing, how to set up a sales funnel that captures our website visitors and turns them into new found fans and clients.
We've failed — a lot. Screwed up, made some very costly errors, spent way too long figuring out how to install that plugin on our blog, create that 'perfect' sales page and run a webinar that doesn't suck.
How To Really Make Money Online
- Create a product or service that people want to buy and sell it to them.
- Find a product or service someone else created that people want to buy and sell it to them.
- Sell advertising space to someone who is selling a product or service whether it be their own or someone else's.
It's not rocket science! You just need to get really clear on what it is that you offer that others will pay for.
It's called your sweet spot — the intersection between what you already know, what you do well and what you love doing. Figure that out and you are well ahead of the rest.
What's your sweet spot?
Natalie Sisson is a Suitcase Entrepreneur who ensures you build a rocking online presence and a profitable business that you can run from anywhere in the world by defining your sweet spot. She is on a mission to empower 10,000 women to have lucrative launches, a million dollar mindset, and killer coaching by 2014 with WE Mastermind (www.wemastermind.com).
