Online Businesses- How to Get Started and Make Money with an Online Business

How to Get Started and Make Money with an Online Business

An online business can be anything from a small blog to a major e commerce operation. If you're looking to start your own online business, we'll show you how to make money online, get more website traffic, and promote your business on the internet with email and social media marketing.

It’s never been easier to start your very own profitable online business. Whatever your niche, whatever your product, whatever your industry, there’s a place for you in the marketplace.

There are several factors at play here.

• More people than ever are shopping online. According to industry watcher Mintel, 69% of Americans do so regularly.
• The software and online tools available make it possible for anyone to build and manage an e-commerce website. And you can do it for well under $100.

• Marketing online is cheap and easy - again, anybody can do it. And with social media platforms like Facebook, there are ever-increasing ways to reach your customers.

But how do you get started? How do you go from where you are now to a massive passive income that allows you to quit your day job and enjoy ultimate time and financial freedom?

Well, you start from the beginning and go from there. Here are the steps to creating your online business, proven methods used by thousands of successful online entrepreneurs.

Pick a Profitable Market

This is where you have to set aside your own ego for a minute. You may have had a “dream business” in mind for years. You just know in your heart that a certain niche is profitable… that a certain product will sell like gangbusters. But until you do the actual market research you won’t really know. And it’s not worth investing your startup capital… creating products… or setting up a website until you know for sure a particular market is worth pursuing.

Basically, you have to start with the market first. You have to identify what niches are popular right now… and what types of products are hot. But be careful not to pick something out that is a flash in the pan and will go away soon. (Remember those wheeled “hoverboards” that were all the rage around Christmas - where are they now?) Instead, you want something with staying power.

There are many markets like this like pet care, exercise programs and weight loss, nutritional supplements, natural cures, travel, photography, video games, golf… the list goes on.

Some ways to identify a hot market are to look at online retailers like Amazon.com. What are the top sellers? Keep an eye on the news. Pick up magazines and see what’s advertised or what is being written about. Also, what are people talking about on Facebook… and what’s being advertised? All this provides clues for finding a potentially profitable market.

It may seem counterintuitive, but you want to see a lot of competition in your market. It’s actually best, at least for a small-scale entrepreneur like yourself, to not be a pioneer that is first to market. You want to go where there’s a ready and large group of people ready to buy.

What’s left is matching one of these hot markets with something you’re interested in. With so many potential markets out there, you’re sure to find some way to match your passion with profits.

Related: How to Pick a Profitable Niche for Your Online Business

Find / Create Products to Sell

Once you’ve picked your hot market with profit potential, it’s time to figure what to sell them.

You have two options: find existing products to promote as an affiliate or create your own products. Each has advantages and drawbacks.

But first, you have to figure out what types of products you should you sell. Again, you can look at sites like Amazon and eBay to figure out what types of products are selling best in certain niches. For example, in the weight loss niche, diet books, and exercise programs sell very well. And there are many companies and online merchants offering them for sale.

A low-risk way to get started with products is to sell other people’s products. You don’t have to spend time or money to develop them, they’re proven to sell, and you won’t have to worry about delivery (either in the mail or electronically), storage, managing orders, customer service, refunds, or anything like that.

This is called affiliate marketing.

Basically, you do the marketing and customers order through your e-commerce site. But the company that created the product handles the rest. And, as an affiliate, you get a commission (from 5% and up, depending on the product) every time somebody buys. This is a great way to get started with your business.

Amazon has a good affiliate program, with a huge variety of products. Clickbank.com specializes in information products, although they have physical products too. You’ll find big-name retailers on CJ Affiliate by Conversant (formerly called Commission Junction). But just about every niche and industry has an affiliate program - do some online digging if these don’t fit your market or business.

Of course, if you’re ready to create your own products, you could do that too. But you wouldn’t want to create a physical product necessarily because that can require a big upfront investment with no guaranteed return.

A lower risk way to do sell your own products would be to create information products: ebooks, membership websites, videos, audio programs… For example, if you were in the organic gardening niche you could have an ebook special report on growing organic watermelons or a video showcasing the best techniques for pest control without pesticides.

If it’s electronic it can be easily stored online or digitally, and delivered the same way. That makes it extremely low cost and automatic. The only thing you spend to develop these products is your time and expertise.

See Also: 5 Simple Ways to Make Money Online

Set up Your Website

You have your market… you have your product. Now it’s time to set up your online storefront, which is where you’ll market and sell your products.

You don’t have to be a tech genius to set up your own website… and you don’t have to hire an expensive web designer either. With the software and online programs and services available today, anybody can create a professional-looking website with a shopping cart, list building capabilities, blogging - in short, everything you need for your thriving online business.

And the best part of all is that it’s either free or very low cost. With programs likeWordPress or Squarespace they offer ready-to-go templates. Creating your site is as easy as filling up boxes with your sales pages, email sign-up boxes, filling in your products in your shopping cart, and other content. If you can send an email, you can do it. Plus, you can update and change your sites look, its content, and everything else whenever you want.

These are robust platforms, with plenty of apps and plug-ins for search engine optimization, your marketing efforts, analytics to track visitors to your seat and much more. As far as hosting and picking a domain name, you can handle that through these services or go on your own with another service like GoDaddy. It’s up to you.

Why not hire a professional to build your website? They’re expensive for one. They take forever. You have to contact them (and pay them) whenever you want to make changes. And they charge by the hour, which isn’t good when you’re on a start-up budget. Besides you don’t want to be at their mercy - you want to be able to update and make changes immediately when you need them done.

See Also: The Top Budget-Friendly Web Hosts for Your Online Business

Create a List and Market to It

When you have a business, you need customers to survive. That’s a no-brainer. But how do you find prospects - people interested in your product - and turn them into buyers?

For a startup, small-scale online business, it’s best to seek out your target market, ask for their email, and then market to that list.

You add email addresses through a variety of methods. The cheapest - but most time-consuming method - is to slowly but surely add valuable content about your niche to your website and/or blog. This will attract the attention of search engines like Google. These search engine optimization efforts will pay off in increasing traffic to your website by those people searching for information on your topic. A percentage of those people will sign up for your list. That’s why it’s best to have a sign-up box, usually asking for a first name and email address, prominently on your homepage.

You can also build your list through social media like Facebook, paid advertising(banner ads, insert ads, or pay-per-click ads), and more.

Related: 3 Free Ways to Market Your Business Online

Once you have your list, you have to start marketing. But it’s not about sending sales offers day after day. People will soon unsubscribe or even report you as spam.

It’s important to pass on valuable information to your prospects as well. Give them plenty of freebies - tips and tricks in your niche. This makes them know, like, and trust you. You could “warm them up” with valuable content in a newsletter, for example. You could also do so in your blog, ebooks, special reports, Facebook posts, videos, and audios.

Of course, while you may be a nice person, you’re not in this to simply be a humanitarian. You want to make money too. So you also have to send sales offers. Again, you have to have finesse here.

You can’t just send them an order form. You have to show them the benefits of the product. You have to paint a picture (figuratively) that shows them how their life will be better if they use your product. You have to provide proof that it works. And finally, you have to give them a push to buy the product - a special offer they can’t refuse.

People are naturally resistant to buying something new. You have to create excitement… desire… for your product.

You do that with effective sales copy. It’s the art of using words to tap into consumer psychology. And you must use these principles in just about every communication with customers, whether it’s on your website, your email, your social media posts, or your paid ads.

If you plan to write your own copy it’s important to study copy writing and marketing techniques, concentrating on direct-response marketing. And there is a ton of free information out there from groups like American Writers and Artists Inc. and Copyblogger.com. You can also hire copywriters through sites like Upwork.com

Of course, even if you do hire a copywriter, it’s best to know copy writing yourself at some level for quality control.

See Also: 3 Ways to Make Email Automation Work for Your Online Business

Putting It All Together

This has been a crash course in starting your own online business from scratch. It may seem like an intimidating process. It doesn’t have to be.

This will take some time and effort. You’ll have to make some tough choices along the way. But the trick is to do a little bit each day - that way you don’t get overwhelmed. Take it one step at a time and spend at least an hour each day working on something. But be sure to go in order. Find your market, then your product or products… then build your site and start marketing.

Just keep continually working toward your goal of having a profitable online business… and you’ll get there. This is not a race. You want to build a solid foundation for a business that will last and bring in income for years to come.

Once you've gotten your online business started, the next step will be driving massive amounts of traffic to your new website.