Critical Factors For Creating A Profitable Online Business

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Creating A Profitable Online Business

It’s so easy to become excited about the opportunities to build online businesses that we often forget about the mechanics involved with making them a success. Forget the mechanics and you’ll dig yourself a hole. Get things right in the beginning and the income generated by your websites might grow to quickly outstrip what you’re currently earning.

Creating an online business that generates a dependable income stream is not complicated. The trouble is, few marketers line up the necessary pieces before they start. Today, I’m going to give you an internet marketing blueprint. You’ll be able to apply it to any type of online business you create. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling information products, building membership sites, or promoting affiliate offers. If you address the following three factors, you can create a business that will continue to generate income for years.

Your Product

You must have a product to sell. This includes anything that adds value to someone else’s life. Don’t become bogged down by thinking only of information products and software. “Products” can include affiliate offers, services, and even seminars. Your “product” can include your blog posts, newsletter, or the information you give visitors on your content sites. All of these represent value to somebody.

Most marketers create their own products. There are advantages to doing so, such as being able to maintain exclusive control of the quality and price point. It also gives you the opportunity to raise your own army of affiliates. And few things are more powerful than a large group of people happily promoting your products.

If you don’t want to spend time creating your own products, you can acquire them from others. For example, you might hire a writer to create an ebook for which you own the copyright. Or, you might hire a voiceover expert to produce your CDs. You might contract a programmer to design a piece of software your customers will find useful.

Ever notice marketers who sell dozens of items under their name? They rarely create them on their own. As I’m writing this post, I’m thinking of one person in particular who does this and generates $500,000 a year.

Motivated Traffic

The best products will die on the vine without a stream of targeted traffic. Creating an online business that generates a reliable income depends on producing this traffic. You can do it with search engine optimization strategies, pay per click advertising, feeder sites, squeeze pages, and social media marketing. You can also do it with blogging, video marketing, email list building, and small-scale media buys.

Each of these traffic-building strategies deserves its own post (its own book, really), so I’ll leave the details for later. Suffice to say, if you can control the traffic, you own the key to a profitable online business.

You should read Joe Marsh’s “How to get to the First Page of Google” it hold some Valuable material on getting quick targeted sustaining traffic!

Conversions

Let’s suppose you’re selling the perfect product. You also have a healthy traffic funnel through which you’re sending a large stream of motivated visitors. The last piece of the marketing puzzle is your ability to convert those visitors to buyers.

Similar to developing traffic, there are many ways to increase your conversion rate. The good news is that you can test everything, collect data, and make changes quickly. For example, does adding a picture of a smiling female adult on your sales page increase the percentage of visitors who purchase your product? Does including another free bonus have an impact? How about offering a more generous guarantee? Would audio testimonials influence conversions?

The number of elements you can test to increase your conversion rate is limitless. And you’ll be surprised by the things which can influence it.

A Seamless Income-Generating System

If you have a product that adds value, can generate targeted traffic, and are able to convert visitors to buyers, you have everything you need to build a profitable online business. Each factor is crucial. Controlling two of them without the third is a recipe for failure. But, if you invest the time to line up these three factors in the beginning, your business can generate an ongoing income.

In past posts, I’ve described ways in which you can create or acquire products. I’ve also explained some of the most powerful marketing strategies you can use to generate traffic. I’ve also touched upon copywriting. We’ll be revisiting each of these areas soon to prepare you for creating your online business.

Build A Bigger Online Business By Going Niche

Bigger Online Business By Going Niche

Online marketers are driven by the thought of generating large amounts of money with their businesses. The problem is that their vision is often too broad. For example, they may be tempted to create a general site about “health,” “cars,” or “sports.” A decade ago, that would have worked. Today, large brands are dominating their space and they have the war chest to beat back their competitors.

You must focus on niches. By doing so, you can carve out your territory more easily, speak directly to your audience, and gradually build your business to dominate small sectors. So, unless private investors have given you $10 million with which to build the next About.com, let’s talk about “going niche.”

Carving Out Your Territory

It is far easier to compete in smaller verticals than vying for attention as a general site. First, Google likes focused properties. Their algorithms – both organic and paid search – take the focus of your site into account when ranking your pages or determining your minimum bids.

For example, let’s suppose that you want to build a site about cars. The most potent search engine optimization strategies will not lift your pages to the top organic spots without your domain having significant age and authority. A good example of such a site is Edmunds.com.

On the other hand, let’s suppose you’re building a site about car parts for Honda sedans (a niche). You’ll fare much better in Google’s organic and paid listings. Their algorithms will note the tight focus of your site and rank your pages accordingly. While you’ll never be number one for “cars,” (without a hefty war chest), you can quickly carve out your territory by ranking for niche keywords.

Once you do, you’ll find the audience you attract is much easier to convert.

Speaking To Your Audience

The more targeted your niche, the easier it will be to speak directly to your audience. That results in a higher conversion rate. Whether you’re selling information products, blogging with an up-sell to a coaching program, or generating Adsense revenue, the more tightly segmented your audience, the better. Segmentation lets you directly address your customers’ needs. In effect, it allows you to continue the conversation that is already going on in their mind. There lies the path to higher conversions.

For example, let’s suppose you’re selling an ebook about weight loss. There are a lot of competing information products. If you cannot differentiate your ebook from the rest of the pack, your audience will have other options. Those options will lower your sales. But, let’s suppose your ebook is geared toward women who would like to lose weight immediately following childbirth. Your audience will be smaller, but they’ll have a specific need that you can address. As a result, your sales will naturally increase.

Building Your Online Empire

One of the advantages of “going niche” with your online business is that it perfectly builds the framework for expansion. By moving into related verticals, you can take advantage of your first niche’s momentum.

Let’s return to our “weight loss after childbirth” ebook example. Your customers will likely be interested in related topics. This is a perfect opportunity to expand your business. Ebooks about “nutrition after childbirth” and “fitness after childbirth” will probably sell well. Each ebook should be supported by its own site. By linking your growing portfolio of related sites, Google’s ranking algorithms will note their similar topics. As a result, each of your sites will enjoy an authority boost.

We’ve touched upon a number of marketing strategies and concepts in today’s post. Most are secondary to the main point: if you want to compete and build a bigger business, go niche. Your customers will thank you, Google will like you, and your bank account will show the results.

Below are a couple of more Resources to help you further with Niche Marketing:

Click here for The Power of a Focused Business

Click here for – Build A niche Store

Click here for – Niche Review Templates!

How to use Twitter

Reasons Twitter is a dominant Marketing Tool

Social networking is on the rise and one of the greatest quickest tools you can use in getting exposure for your site. It is a great way to get quick traffic to your site and build a loyal following of followers to you.

Whether you are just getting started with an online business or you have been around for a while and looking for a new way to network, have a look at Twitter. Here are 5 reasons Twitter is a powerful marketing tool for online business owners like you.

1. It’s Short, Sweet & To the Point
Have you ever heard the phrase, less is more? You’ll find that one of the best things about Twitter is that it keeps all messages very short and sweet. You’ll have to give your customers and clients the gist of what is going on in short tweets (messages similar to instant messages) that allow their interest to be piqued in such a way as to make them investigate further.

2. Urgency
Much like a blog or an RSS feed, you can get access to the people that use Twitter regularly. This is like making sure that you can reach them no matter where they are, and you will find that this is very important when you want to make marketing one of your biggest priorities. You are making sure that they have all of the latest updates to what you are doing and what’s going on by simply sending a tweet post their way.

3. Everyone’s Twittering and Customer Loyalty
In many ways, Twitter is a social program more than it is a marketing one, and you’ll find that using Twitter can help you feel a great deal closer to your client base and others in your online community. If you are looking to make sure that they see you as a person rather than as simply a company or service, you’ll find that Twitter encourages them to think of you as someone they can get to know. This can be very important when it comes to establishing a customer base and customer loyalty.

4. You are in the Now!
Remember that it goes both ways; you can put information out on Twitter and you can also learn a lot too. By following others Twitter accounts, especially if it looks like they have a lot to offer, you can keep in the know about various products, services, and other happenings online. This can be a great way to keep an eye on what is going on in order to keep yourself in the know of your industry.

5. Make Them Laugh
You can also use Twitter to tease people a little bit, in a fun way, of course! When you use Twitter, you have to keep your messages short, and in many ways, a little mysterious. Pique their interest, joke around, and you’ll find that you gain a lot more followers and hopefully website traffic and customers as a result.

Be warned, just as with any other social networking site, Twitter can quickly become addicting if you let it. Don’t go overboard and get so involved in all the tweeting that it takes away from your intended purpose (Social Marketing and Networking). Used wisely Twitter can be a great and powerful marketing tool to help create online business success for the long run

Part two on USING TWITTER.