The stuff no one talks about
Being part of our community has it's benefits. We have a huge user base that shares information and ideas . One of the things I have noticed id that most posts never touch on the things that you need to have in the back of your mind when you start.
1: You Have To Work At It.
I don’t mean checking your balance every day. I mean doing serious work. Online marketing is a constantly changing environment. What works one day is obsolete the next. No matter what you do online you need to be constantly researching and upgrading your product. You need to put in the work. The first mistake I made was to sit back and watch the money get made. This was followed by watching profits fall and no new income happening. Why ? I was not checking my stats, I was not following trends and I definitely was not testing and fine tuning my marketing plans. Serious testing can be the difference between making a little money and a ton of money. You have to watch what is trending online (free on most news shows ) and be ready to adapt your strategy in that direction. Never be afraid to add a new direction to your marketing plan because you never know when you may need to change your primary means of contact or sales (it was over night that my Adsense income dropped to zero when Facebook changed its format). In essence the Internet changes every day so you have to be ready to adapt to keep current and profitable.
2: You Need a Plan!!
Starting your online business plan is basically two parts.
The easy part is putting together the basics for your online presence. If your into affiliate marketing all you need is an affiliate network and a marketing platform. Done. If you want an online store you have to choose your software platform, set up a credit card account and delivery options. Yup lots of homework involved but no rocket science.
Now comes the hard part- your e-business plan. This requires you to have an awareness ,an inventive strategy and most of all an understanding of what it means to do business online. Developing a sound business plan is crucial! This is the do-or-die step in creating your online presence.
You are getting one momentous opportunity to think things through. I mean to really think things through and that is NOW! This is the time to really think about what your doing. Make your hard decisions in the beginning. After you launch is not the time to start playing catch-up or realise that you went the wrong way. More E-businesses have failed because of poor planning than due to software problems or hosting or web design issues! You only have to look to the late 1990’s and most of the large Internet firms that went the way of the Dodo bird. They had amazing tech staffs, marketing budgets that rivalled the GNP of most small countries and yet they are gone.
Why ? Because their business plan and the Titanic’s plan for dealing with icebergs were about as well thought out. Before you launch MyE-Business.com, make sure you’ve planned for both the good and the bad. Build in resource back-up from the start, scale-ability needs to be factored in and definitely set milestones and goals on a reasonable timeline.
3: Make Time
By make time I mean literally set aside a definite time that you will do nothing but work on your on-line business. This is where you make your money. Time in equals money out. Even if you have fully automated your sales and email responses you still need to monitor your results, update your strategies and maintain contact with your clientele. Just think of running a blog or affiliate marketing business if you never put aside the time to write the blog or keep your offers current by removing expired offers and adding new ones. This is a must! Sure there are claims of 100% automated businesses out there. They still require you to answer your one off e-mail requests ,respond to customer questions and monitor the software. On top of that interaction with your client base is where you can get your most valuable feed back to base your business decisions on. So by all means set aside time ( it could be an hour a day or a block on the weekend) where you do nothing but attend to your business.
There you have it! The basics for a successful online business.
Recent Comments
6
Thanks Eric!
This is one of the most essential and powerful posts I have seen in a while. I have it bookmarked to be sure I reread it now and then to keep on point.
Hal
The idea of the title is to get people to read the post. The body of my post was to get people thinking and search the blogs for the information that will help them prepare for online marketing. I have read most of the blogs and am saying that the information is not here but rather these are points that most people dont think about when starting.
Thanks, Eric for your detailed and passionate blog you are certainly on the right track with what you saying.
However, your post title isn't correct at all. Here at WA, we are talking about these things very sincerely.
Kyle's training is build on the correct steps to get everything ones need to become a successful operating online marketer.
Also Jay's Live Class every Friday is teaching us the newest trends and updates of algorithms from Google and Co.
Then, there are tons of training tutorials from very knowledgeable WA members to give up any heads up we do need to stay up to date.
Just wanted to make this clear, no offense.
Sylvia
last sentence should read " I have read most of the blogs and am saying that the information is here but rather these are points that most people dont think about when starting.
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Great advice :)