To run your own online business can be fun and very lucrative. Most people will tell you that it is easy and will cost you little to start such a business.
I must however tell you that it is not easy to make money online and that you just must work as hard as you would with an offline business. Nothing worthwhile is easy or cheap.
Now the demand for online courses is huge and you can make a lot with the knowledge you have and can share with those who need your advice.
In the next few articles, I plan to give you the information that you need to start your own business.
There are three main things that you need to run a successful business.
Your Product or Service to Sell
There are several niches to choose from, but the five main ones are:
- Health – fitness and nutrition, memory loss, aches, and pains.
- Wealth – money matters, online marketing, bookkeeping.
- Relationships – finding a spouse, keeping your spouse happy.
- Hobbies and special skillsets like arts and crafts.
- Personal development and mindset.
Once you have made your choice, you must try to niche down as far as possible. It will be easier to find your first customers if you can be specific about who your target market is. The more specialized your offer is, the higher price you can charge.
Example: Say you decide to create a time management course. You might be able to sell it for $19 to the public but you will find it difficult to stand out in the crowd. If you create a time management course for senior executives, then you can easily sell it at $2995 to CEOs of larger companies. Their time is much more valuable, and they have the money to pay to save a few hours to have more hours at home with their family.
You will stand out in the crowd and the right people will notice your offer and look closer for more information. If you can offer them a free guide about your topic, then they might be willing to give you their email address to send it to them. This is how you start building a list of prospects and to evaluate and see if there is interest in what you want to create as an offer to sell.
You can easily create your own Facebook Group where you can post further content about your topic and find out what the real problems are that your prospects are struggling with.
By communicating with them you can build rapport with them, and they will start to see you as the expert. Do not be afraid to share your best tips with them. They will think that if this is the value of your free advice, then what would the value be if they paid you?
Your Choice of Product
Now that you have decided on your niche, then you have a few more choices to make.
What kind of product or service can you offer?
If you are completely new in the business, then it is always best to first offer a one-on-one service like consulting or coaching. With consulting you offer to do something for the client while with coaching you offer to do it with them.
It will allow you to test the waters and to gain experience in what your customers need. It is not always the same as what they want. They might want to make more money, but to do that they might first need to get a better mindset. You will soon realize in what way you can solve their problems for them.
It is much better to first get these insights before you spend a lot of time, money, and effort in developing a course that will not serve your student best. Through consulting or coaching you develop more confidence and once you get your recipe right, you can start to video record your coaching sessions.
These videos can later become the core training of your course.
By following this evolutionary process, you will become the expert that knows just how to answer every question and how to help your students to surmount every objection they have or obstacle they encounter.
The key to your success is to get your students to get early results so that they can see progress. It will encourage them to keep at it until they reach their goal. This is again where your group can be extremely valuable because they can discuss their progress with each other. Those that have already got some results can tell the others about it which will encourage the beginners to put them into action as well.
Always encourage everyone to refer their friend so that they can also have a dream outcome. Referrals are the best leads you can get because the “selling” has already been done and you only have to show them your offer and they will buy.
Another benefit of having a Facebook Group is that you get all the email addresses of those that join it. This is how you start building your list. Offer them something of value like a free guide to get their permission to contact them via email on a regular basis.
This way you can build a relationship of trust with them. Your email lists will become the most valuable asset of your online business. Just always keep separate lists for your prospects and your customers. You can even have separate lists for people who bought different products from you.
They will then only receive relevant information from you and not get offers for products that they already bought from you.
Marketing Your Business
People do not buy products and services – they buy solutions to their problems. They buy favorable outcomes, dream outcomes.
If you can clearly show your prospect what the result will be if they buy your offer, then you will not have to pressure them into buying it. They will see it as an investment that will benefit them.
Once your system is set up correctly and you are making continuous sales, you can either do paid advertising or set up your own affiliate program. Most business owners, myself included, find it difficult to manage product creation as well as marketing. You can hire people to do the marketing for you, which can be expensive and not always so successful.
In my experience it is an innovative idea to enroll your satisfied customers to become your affiliate sales team. They do the marketing for you while you pay them a commission on the sales they make.
With an active affiliate sales team that does your marketing for you, you can now only focus on creating more courses or even drafting your own book.
In this article we have shown how you go about choosing your topic. If it is something that you enjoy doing and are excited about, you will see success.
Secondly, we looked at the products and services that you can create to sell.
Lastly, we discussed how you can market your offer and create your own affiliate program.
The one thing that everyone needs is a platform where you can host your products. Today you are fortunate in that there is a solution that will provide you with everything that you need to run a successful online business.
It offers you the following under a single roof:
- A free membership site where you can host all your products.
- A free payment processor to receive payments.
- An affiliate program to build your own sales team.
- A website with as many pages as you like.
- You can create opt-in pages and a blog.
- Mailing service with an autoresponder to email your list.
- You can create videos and run an online webinar.
- They will host all your files for download and videos to view.
Follow this link to open your free account now.
I am using this facility extensively and you can see my website. You will see that I have my own domain name and that they are hosting my website and membership for me.
While you are working on your own products, you can promote this easy to sell program and earn commission. Just follow the link below to see how it works at the 7-Figure Launch System.
(These are affiliate links above, and I might earn a commission if you buy something.)
