HOW TO START AN ONLINE BUSINESS.FULL STEP-BY-STEP

Now that you know the basics of the what the internet is. I can teach you the simple basics of internet is I can teach you the simple basics of

starting your very own online business! So lets get

started:

Setting your online business goals:

The process of setting goals and objectives and

then designing strategies for attaining them is

essential when starting an Internet Business. So,

you end up with what is called a business plan.

To set specific goals for your new business, first

ask yourself this question:

Why do I want to start an Internet Business?

We already covered this in the early chapter, which

is why you’re reading on! Okay, next question:

What product or service can I offer to the people

on the Internet?

OR

Do I have a product or service that people are

looking for on the Internet?

To save you some research work, I’ve included the

list of Top 17 Best-selling items / categories on

the Internet below:

1. Clothing

2. Toys and Video Games

3. Electronics

4. Computer Hardware

5. VCDs / DVDs

6. Books

7. Greeting Cards

8. Home Furnishing

9. Jewelry

10. Health

11. Travel

12. Automobile

13. Real Estate

14. Online Trading

15. Music

16. Food

17. Sports

When identifying a need, doing market research is

part of your homework. One of your first steps

should be to find out what it means to do business

online and to determine the best ways for you to

fit into the exploding field of e-commerce

(electronic commerce). The more information you

have on the following aspects of the Internet, the

more likely you are to succeed in doing business

online:

Competition: Familiarize yourself with other

existing Internet Businesses that are already doing

what you want to do.

Customers: Research the various kinds of customers

who shop online and who might visit your site.

Environment: Explore the special language and style

of online communication – in other words, know the

culture of the Internet. If you are not yet

familiar with the culture of the Internet, then the

best way to learn is to subscribe to e-zines

(electronic magazines) and newsletters for your

reading.

Write all your ideas down on a piece of paper. Ask

yourself, “What do I have that people are looking

for on the Internet?” Take your time. This is not

supposed to be an overnight activity. So, don’t be

surprised if you take days. Taking your time and

doing a thorough market research on the Internet

beats jumping onto an opportunity at first sight.

What if you don’t have any products to sell?

I would like to take this chance to get a HUGE MYTH

out of the way. If you think you NEED to have a

product to sell to make money – then you’re dead

wrong, really.

You’ll be glad that you’re wrong after I tell you

this. You still CAN make money without having to

create your own product. And there are several

instances you DON’T NEED to HAVE a product to sell

at all in order to make money!

How?

Quite simply, you can either be a referral to earn

a commission or sell advertising spaces on your

website or newsletter. That, my friend, is just a

speck of a dust. There are still many other ways

you can make money on the Internet WITHOUT having

to have your own product to sell.

Furthermore, you can either:

• Buy Resell Rights to someone else’s product and

start selling it on the internet. All you would

need to do is buy resell rights to an info

product, upload it to the internet and drive

traffic to it via Google Adwords…and there’s

your 1 hour online business. You could also…

• Sign up as an affiliate and promote someone

else’s product (this is even easier than the

first business). All you’d need to do is sign

up to an affiliate program and drive traffic to

your affiliate link…Again, you can use Google

Adwords to drive traffic to the link.

This is good news to those who are already sweating

over the thought that of needing to create or have

their own product to sell to make money! However,

the 10 Step approach to setting up your own

Internet Business presented in this chapter gears

more towards “selling products or services”

Internet Business Models.

Picking an online business model

Already decided what you have in store for your

customers? Good!

The next thing to do on the list is to choose the

right Internet Business Model. Now this is crucial

to your Internet Business success. The Internet

Business Model has to be right for the type of

product or service you’re offering to your

customers. When choosing the right Internet

Business Model, you will want to take the following

factors into consideration:

• Profit Margin – the higher the profit margin,

the better.

• Delivery – can be easily delivered to your

customers via a system.

• Shipping Cost – as low as possible or even

none.

• Marketing – different Internet Business Models

have different marketing strategies. Choose the

model that has the best marketing strategy for

your product or services.

To date, there are 19 low-cost, high-profit

Internet Business Models on the Internet to choose

from.

Identify your target market

The inside secret is to search in search engines

(such as Google and Overture) with keywords related

to your product or service to find out if many

websites, newsletters and community groups focus on

this interest.

Get a domain name

I have already explained to you what a domain name

is. You also know that your website address can

ALSO be your Internet Business name.

You will want to take out another new piece of

paper again to write down ALL the keywords related

to your Internet Business. You see, you want your

domain name to:

• be short and easy to remember (and catchy,

too!),

• be relevant to the product or service you’re

selling,

• include keywords of your product or service to

improve search engine rankings.

For example, if you want to sell a product teaching

people how to break-dance, then you will want to

start writing down all the keywords related to

break-dance.

For starters, write 100 keywords. What next, you

ask? Write some more! Write 200 or 300 if you have

to. The more keywords, the better. That is because

this is a one-off activity. And remember that you

will be using this domain name for a very long

time, if not forever. Now, don’t even get lazy.

Okay, I’ll offer you some food for thought.

Are you parent to any child? If you are not, then

imagine you are one right now. You and your spouse

have a child for the first time. You and your

spouse would want to give the best name to your

child, right? Of course you both would! You and

your spouse would brainstorm on giving your child

the best name. “How about John?” “Aw, John is too

common a name!” “Then how about …?” “I think the

name…” and finally, your child has a name to be

addressed by.

When brainstorming on your child’s name, you and

your spouse consciously or unconsciously know that

giving your child the best and meaningful name is

VERY important because your child will be living

with that name from cradle to the grave.

So, on the same token, why would you not think the

same when brainstorming on a good domain name? This

is your Internet Business. You need to nurture and

grow it during its infancy stages before it rewards

you. Are you not going to give it your best

attention, too?

I hope that woke you up. Now, back to the keyword

activity…

With the help of the list of keywords you have

written down, you will find it easy to get a domain

name that fulfills the 3 guidelines stated above.

In the same example, you would probably come up

with a domain name like www.howtobreakdance101.com.

Next, check whether the domain name has been

registered or not. If the domain name has been

registered by someone else, you will have to use

another domain name. So, maybe you’ll think of

using www.lordofthefloor.com for a domain name.

When brainstorming on a good domain name, be sure

to come up with at least a few names in case the

domain name you wish to use is already taken.

Remember me telling you that there can never be two

houses bearing the same address?

Another thing you have to consider is the various

kinds of domain names on the Internet. So you will

have to choose carefully.

Below are some of the common ones:

• .com - stands for commercial / community. The

most overused domain entity on the Internet.

Recommended for your Internet Business.

• .net - stands for network.

• .org - stands for organization. A lot of online

communities use this domain entity.

• .gov - stands for government. All government

web sites use this domain entity.

• .biz - stands for business. Recommended for

your Internet Business.

The next thing to do is find a web host. Any

business needs a place to call home. If you run a

conventional business, you have to rent space in an

office or shopping complex. In the case of setting

up an Internet Business, you need to set up a

virtual space. You do so by creating a website and

finding a host for your site. A web host company

that makes your site available 24/7 (24 hours a

day, 7 days a week) by maintaining it on a Web

server. I have covered this topic with you briefly

in the second chapter.

When sourcing for a good web host, you want to make

sure that your host has a fast connection to the

Internet and can handle large numbers of

simultaneous visits (also known as hits) that your

website is sure to get eventually. You also want to

make sure that your web host offers a variety of

related services, including some or all of the

following:

• E-mail addresses. You’re like to be able to get

several e-mail addresses for your own. Many web

hosts also give you special e-mail addresses

called autoresponders (discussed earlier in

Chapter 2).

• Domain name. You and I have just covered this

subject above.

• Web page software. Some web hosting services

include web page authoring / editing software.

• Multimedia / CGI scripts. Some web hosting

services have the ability to serve complex and

memory-intensive content such as RealAudio

sound files or RealVideo video clips. They also

let you process web page forms that you include

on your site by executing computer programs

called CGI scripts.

• Shopping Cart software. Most organizations

prove you with Web page forms that you can fill

out to create sale items and offer them in an

online shopping cart.

• Site statistics. Site statistics give you an

idea of how many visitors you have received.

• Shopping and electronic commerce features and

more.

Make a simple and professional website

Since you’re into business, the purpose of your

website is to SELL. Nothing else! That’s because

YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD HAVE ONE MAIN FOCUS.

Nope, it’s not selling dozens or hundred of

products. Nope, it’s not links to several different

affiliate programs and NOPE, certainly not a link

to Yahoo.com.

Doing any of the above just confuses your visitor,

thus decreasing your chances of converting him or

her into your customer.

If you’re selling a product or service, it should

be clear what ONE action you want them to take.

They would either:

• Buy your product or service

OR

• Don’t buy.

But are you going to let them go away just like

that? Of course N-E-V-E-R!

So, you need to get your visitors to leave their e-

mail address and other essential information for

follow-up increases your chance to help you make a

sale because the fact is that most people don’t buy

on first contact.

To do this, you write a compelling sales letter for

your product and post it to your website. You can

add images of your product, testimonials from happy

customers, and other relevant images. The focus of

your website is the sales letter.

Now, let’s talk about the layout of your web page.

Your main text color should be black on a white

background. You can have other colors such as blue,

red and gray on your website, but the background

behind the text should be white. The color of your

main text should be black. No other exceptions!

That is because this is the easiest format to read.

You are in business so dress your site in a

business manner.

On the technical side, you can choose from three

methods to create your own web pages:

• Do it yourself (D.I.Y.) – if you are well

versed in using web page tools such as

Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage

to create your web pages then this option is

probably the best for you.

• Hire A Free Lancer, Professional or Internal

I.T. Team - if you don’t know how to create web

pages, you may want to consider hiring

professional help as learning how to create

your own web pages can be time-consuming. While

it can incur high professional fee, this option

can be your best value for money in the long

run. However, this option should be filtered

out if you’re on a strict budget.

• Go to Solobis – if the above two methods are

not for you – don’t sweat over it. This suite

has been set up to remove not only the

technical barriers but also eliminate risks for

aspiring but clueless Internet Entrepreneurs at

an affordable price. Besides having over 400

beautiful web site templates to choose from,

this suite provides other Internet Business

tools and services such as Sequential

Autoresponders, Pop-Up Window Generator,

Mailing List Broadcaster, Article Generator,

Killer Sales Letter Generator, Headline

Generator, and many more to get you starting

your Internet Business quickly! If you are on a

strict budget, then all the more you must go to

this suite to make your dreams of earning

income from the Internet come to life!

Create a unique selling proposition (USP) for you

product / website.

Find ways to make your business stand out from the

crowd. Make yourself and your web site unique in

some way and providing things that others don’t

offer. They can be as tangible as half-price sales,

contests, seasonal sales, freebies or reports. They

can also make your business site higher in quality

than the rest.

That is important because there really is no

purpose of your Internet Business to exist if you

have a million visitors coming to view your site

but too few of them actually become your customers

(a conversion rate of less than 1% is rated poor).

Here’s what you can do to create your own USP. Take

a brand new piece of paper and write, “I know how

most…” Then, half-way down the page, write “Well,

what I do is…”

The purpose of this activity is to know how most

businesses in your field are in the first place and

then you write what tells you and your Internet

Business apart from them. This will take a while to

do. Checking on your competition’s USP is part of

the activity, too.

Next, you will want to write out many phrases or

sentences. This can take days but it will be worth

it for your Internet Business in the long run. Once

you have just the right phrase, that will be your

USP which you will use to separate you from all of

the competition. Now, that is what I call UNIQUE!

Write sales copy that gets results!

Your website must be treated as a sales letter, not

a brochure. That’s because brochures don’t sell.

Let me repeat – BROCHURES DON’T SELL.

Brochures just inform theirs viewers of a product

or service. But they won’t help you make even a

sale (unless that is really what you want but hey,

I have yet to meet anyone who wants to be in

business to lose sales!).

Your sales letter consists of primarily:

• Headline

• Sub-headline

• Benefits vs. Features

• USP

• Free / Special Offer

You have to find a headline that will grab the

attention of your visitors or else they will not

read the rest of your sales letter. This is very

crucial – the headline will make or break your

sales letter!

Assuming, you’re selling an instructional video on

how to play soccer professionally, so you must come

up with an attention-grabbing headline for your

product like the following:

“Learn To Play Soccer Like A

Pro In Just 7 Days”

Visitors especially Soccer enthusiasts (but not

pros) would definitely stop dead in their tracks

and read on to learn more about your product.

Notice the upper-cased and highlighted words.

WARNING: Do not give false promises or mention

something you cannot or don’t intend to deliver in

your sales letter in the attempt to get your

customers to buy from you. This is important

business practice regardless of any form of

business you are doing. For instance, if this

product cannot guarantee its students to be a

Soccer professional in a week, then the product

should be named otherwise or not make into the

lights of the day.

The sub-headline will encourage your visitors to

read further.

The sub-headline will give a spark of hope to

Soccer player wannabes who couldn’t help but think

that their handicap is stopping them from

performing like an Ace on the Soccer field and

therefore encourages them to read further.

Since you’ve already got them interested in reading

your letter, the rest of your sales letter must

tell your potential buyers about the benefits and

features of your product. For instance, you can say

that your product is the best out there (assuming

that is true). You can back this fact by throwing

in testimonials from happy buyers who benefited

from your product, and testimonials are indeed

powerful.

If you have a free offer that can help you increase

the chance of making a sale, don’t hesitate to

give! In this case, you can give a free one-minute

preview clip of your instructional video for your

visitors to watch. Should your visitors decide that

this is for them, they would buy from you.

Now, isn’t that awesome?

Set up an online payment processor

If you sell something that you own or have the

rights to sell, then you need to have a Credit Card

Payment Processor. Credit Card Payment Processors

process credit card payments for you and sends you

the proceeds on a fortnight basis via wire transfer

to your local bank account.

Some reputable Credit Card Payment Processors you

must check out are:

• 2CheckOut - http://www.2CheckOut.com

• Clickbank - http://www.clickbank.com

• iBill - http://www.ibill.com

• PayPal - http://www.paypal.com (this is the

best one)

• StormPay http://www.stormpay.com

Marketing your online business

Now is the time to market to your target market.

Each Internet Business Model is different.

Therefore, you don’t market each and every one of

them the same way. The truth is, not all Internet

Business Models depend on a good search engine

listing. In fact, some of them are not designed to

be listed by search engines at all!

That is simply because each Internet Business

Models have different objectives and set up. That

also means they require different marketing

strategies and tactics to make it work.

Not knowing the different Internet Marketing

approaches that are available for different

Internet Business Models can be expensive. It will

result in spending more time, money and effort than

is necessary for promoting your Internet Business.

Here, I share with you seven main ways to generate

traffic and get to your target market:

Tracking sales and visitors to your website

The purpose of the last step is to determine your

conversion rate of visitors into customers. This

can be easily done if your web host provides a site

statistic.

A good conversion rate from a Killer Sales Letter

is 1 – 3% (depending on the price of the product).

In other words, for every 100 targeted prospects

who visit your site, at least one of them will buy

your product or pay access to your service. If the

conversion rate is higher than 2%, then you are

doing very, very well with your Internet Business!

On the other hand, if your sales letter’s

conversion rate is less than 1%, then you will need

to take quick action to make your site sell more

effectively. You may have to do more compelling

copy writing, change the layout of your web pages

or simply get a better and more attention-grabbing

headline (which is so vital that it can make or

break a sale!).

Whatever you need to do, you have to increase your

conversion rate from poor to excellent!

To track visitors, you can subscribe to counter

services if your web-hosting doesn’t have a site

statistic feature built in. To track sales, check

your Credit Card Payment Processor.

You Can Still Make Money...

“What if I don’t have what it takes to create my

own product? What if I can’t source for other

people’s product to sell?”

“Can I still make my money from the Internet?”

I heard you and the answer is a resounding YES. You

can still have a business online even if you have

NO products to sell. No one should question this

possibility since people are doing this everyday.

“But how do they do that?” you wonder. In the last

chapter, you have found that the 10 steps have a

lot to do with setting up a product-selling-

orientated business. In this chapter, you will find

out how people can still make their money even

without selling a product.

The concept

Imagine you own your daily newspaper. How do you

earn a lot of money from it? Selling them to your

readers for a dollar or less each isn’t going to

profit you. So how are you going to profit from

selling your daily newspaper?

Selling advertisement spaces in your content?

Precisely!

Congratulate yourself if you’ve guessed the answer

correctly. Give yourself a knock on the head if you

have not! Okay, I was joking about that one but you

can’t be serious ALL the time, can you? Anyway,

we’ll move on with the subject.

Quite simply, the more people read your newspaper,

the more money you can charge for your

advertisements.

The concept works the same for Internet Business.

However, when you operate an Internet Business, you

have the following advantages that you won’t have

if you run a conventional business:

• You don’t have to invest a lot of money and

effort into your Internet Business as opposed

to conventional business.

• You don’t need to deal with the delivery of

your newspapers to reach to your readers on

time every day.

• Publishing a newspaper is something that is

beyond the reach of any individual together

with the rewards that come with successful

publication.

• The risk in conventional business is simply too

high compared to Internet Business.

Publish your own news letter

With the Internet as your medium to deliver to your

subscribers, you can publish your own newsletter

daily.

If you follow the right strategy, you don’t even

have to write the content or even a SINGLE word if

you wish, and your subscribers wouldn’t mind! (I’m

serious!)

STEP 1 Choose a topic

Since you will be writing your own newsletter, it

is best that you choose a topic that is non-time

sensitive. This will give you a lot of freedom in

selecting your content since you’re not going to

send out the latest news such as the latest results

on the American Idol (as I write this, it’s the

final showdown between Bo Bice vs Carrie Underwood

and by the time you read this, I guess you already

know who the winner is), terrorist attacks, and the

like. Examples of non-time sensitive topics are

jokes, insults, recipes, short stories, horoscopes,

tips, and ideas.

Another great advantage of choosing a non-time

sensitive topic is that you can work ahead at a

time. For example, you can start compiling the

content for the first 30 days in one day.

STEP 2 Format the newsletter

Assuming you’re going to send out short stories to

your subscribers, how many stories are you going to

send daily? Perhaps two or three short stories a

day.

More short stories (or other content) give you more

spaces for advertisements but this also means that

you’ll have to work harder in creating or sourcing

for more content.

STEP 3 Look for your content

You need to source for content which are copyright

and reprint free. Search engines and article

websites are good places to start. You can also

source for content from article base web sites like

ezinearticles.com as long as you include the author

bylines.

If you are an expert on the topic, you can choose

to write. However, bear in mind that it can also

consume your time and effort in a long run.

You can also receive contributions from your loyal

subscribers and publish them with a mention of

their help. They’ll be happy to help you out.

STEP 4 Set up an auto responder

You need to set up a proper system to deliver your

newsletters to your subscribers. Your auto

responder must have the features that will make

your daily routine of sending out, maintaining your

subscriber list and adding new subscribers as

automated as possible.

You can get a good auto responder system from the

following:

• Aweber

• Getresponse

STEP 5 Create your website

While this is optional, the most important

component of the “Freebie” Internet Business Model

is your newsletter. However, creating web pages can

also open to other possibilities of making money to

you in the process as you can sell advertising

spaces in those pages.

When setting up your business following this

Internet Business Model, you will want to think and

plan through this step carefully as to whether you

would want to create web pages or not.

STEP 6 Get subscribers

Here are some ways to get subscribers:

• Forwards or Word of Mouth – if your subscribers

like your publication a lot, they’ll likely

tell their friends about it. This can be the

most powerful viral tool to spread the good

name of yourself and your newsletter.

• Buy subscribers – you can buy subscribers from

3rd parties selling subscriber names and e-mail

address. Some of them are:

• Writing Articles – when you submit your free

articles related to your topic to article

directories such as ezinearticles.com,

goarticles.com or articlecity.com, this gives

you permission to tell your readers about your

newsletter. You can tell briefly about yourself

and explain how your readers can subscribe to

your newsletter.

• Placing a subscription form on your web site –

this enables you to convert visitors and

passer-bys to become your subscribers. From the

view of conversion rate, this method is better

compared to requesting your visitors to send a

blank e-mail to your auto responder address.You

need to be able to make everything as

convenient as possible for your prospects

because they can very well be your customers.

• Submit your newsletter to newsletter

directories – Ezine directories are great

places to promote your ezine and get targeted

subscribers. Be sure to write a short

compelling description of your ezine before

submitting them to the ezine directories. The

following is a list of directories where you

can submit your ezine. You can search for more

ezine directories in search engines.

While this is only the tip of the iceberg, there

are still many more ways to gain subscribers.

STEP 7 Start making money!

This is how you make your money (probably the most

interesting step of all steps!).

You source for advertisers who are interested in

advertising in your daily newsletter. Like any

daily newspaper, the more subscribers to your

newsletter, the higher the advertisement rate you

can charge simply because a lot of people are going

to see the advertisements.

You can begin sourcing for advertisers the moment

you have 20,000 subscribers or more. Assuming you

have 20,000 subscribers, you can charge your

advertisement rate $20.00 a day. And since you have

different areas of advertising space in your

newsletter, your advertising rate can also be

variable.

Your advertisers make their own advertisements.

Therefore, there is no need for you to do that work

for them. You simply copy and paste the ads into

the allocated spaces in your newsletter and send

them out.

IMPORTANT!

When you have no one buying advertising space in

your newsletter or have yet to reach 20,000

subscribers before sourcing for advertisers, you

can:

• Secure the spots with advertisements of

products you’re selling (if any) until you get

an advertiser, or

• Create an advertisement stating that it’s

vacant for other advertisers. This way, you can

attract the attention of potential advertisers

and hopefully they will contact you to place

their advertisement in your newsletter for a

fee