This article will teach you the basics of starting your first internet business. You’ll be introduced to some beneficial products and services. You can also use this as a checklist to help you stay focused and make it easier to set up and improve your internet business.
- ‘Find a Market’ — Find a market before you decide on a product. If you pick a product first, then find out later that you’ll need to find a product to sell. You could search the internet to see what other people are selling to get some ideas. Or buy resale rights to a product. Maybe you can sell an affiliate product. Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Find a product someone else is selling and make it a little better, different, lower in price, or add a bonus whenever someone buys from you. If you choose to sell digital products, you will find many extra benefits such as no shipping or handling, low start-up cost, and your profit margin will be close to 100%, your customer will get their product right away. And a lot of it can be set up automatically, so there’s less work for you. Make sure to take full advantage of the automation possibilities of the internet.
3) ‘Get a Domain Name’ — You’ll want to have your own domain name. Try to think of a few different names because your first choices may not be available. Choose a short name, and it will be easier for people to remember. If possible get domain names ending with .com or .co.UK. It would help if you also tried to get a name to match your product. And maybe use keywords in your domain name to get a better listing on search engines.
4) ‘Hosting Companies’ — The purpose of a hosting company is to keep your website running properly. They will make sure everything is working properly so your customers can navigate through it and buy your product or service. This is a significant responsibility. If your website isn’t working properly or not at all, then you are losing money. You may find some free hosting companies, but you really do get what you pay for. So it may be better to use a paid hosting company.
5) ‘Create a Website’ — Create a website so your customers can buy your products 24 hours a day. You will be competing with lots of other website’s so try to make yours unique. If your site takes a long time to download, your potential customers will go somewhere else. Graphics are nice to look at but slow to download, so have more text and less graphic. Remember its words that sell products. To get ideas for your website, search the web and look for sites that you like. Make sure your website is easy to navigate. And if you are short on time and have the money, you could hire a professional to build your site. Or if you want to save money, you could do it yourself.
6) ‘Payment Processor’- To collect money for your products, you will need a payment processor. Make sure that you accept credit cards because most transactions will be made with them. You should also consider other options as well, like accepting cheques and postal orders. And you may want to use PayPal. The more ways you can collect money, the more sales you’ll make. And if you’re selling a digital product, you may want to use ClickBank.
7) ‘Autoresponder’ — If you want to make your internet business easier, then you’ll want to automate as much as possible by using autoresponders. You can automate many of your everyday business tasks, leaving more time for you to concentrate on more important things. Here are a few examples: send out email advertisements to everyone on your list at predetermined intervals. Automate the delivery of several different mini-courses all at once. Send out sequential emails automatically whenever someone buys one of your products. Have all of your digital products sent out automatically. And with autoresponders, you can collect names and email addresses and add them to your list of customers and much more.
8) ‘Free Advertising’ — This may be a good way to start if you are limited on funds. But this will be slower than paid advertising and will take a lot more time. And time is money, so figure out how much you’re worth and monitor your time. If you are spending a lot of time with free advertising and not getting the results you like, you may want to try something else. Keep in mind that when using free advertising, someone else may also place their ad with yours, which is not very professional. When you join these free advertising lists, it usually means everyone on that list can send free advertising to you. So you may get a lot of unwanted emails.
9) ‘Paid Advertising’ — You may get better results with paid advertising. And at first, you may think blasting your ad to as many people as possible will make you the most money. But this really isn’t a good idea for a couple of reasons. First, many people won’t be interested in your product, so they’ll probably not even read your ad. And second, you may be accused of spamming, which is something you never want to do. So always try placing ads with your specific targeted group. And always test your results to make sure that it’s cost-efficient.
10)’ Collect a List’ — This gets 5 stars. Start collecting your list of names and email addresses as soon as possible, add to your list often, and cherish your list because it will make you money over and over again. Whenever you need extra money, you can send an email promoting a product to your list. So you’ll want to collect names and email addresses by offering free e-books or a mini-course by having them join your newsletter, and of course, whenever they buy your great product.
And remember to always invest in yourself. Invest your money for quality information to expand your business, and invest your time to read the information thoroughly.
Summary:
This article will teach you the basics of starting your first internet business. You’ll be introduced to some beneficial products and services. You can also use this as a checklist to help you stay focused and make it easier to set up and improve your internet business.
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