Here are the five ways to get started in an online business with step by step methods.
Define your website’s primary goal
Although there are websites provides free information, trouble-shooting and customer support, I will focus on E-commerce (lead generation and sales). E commerce site can be a one page, or many other forms. It depends on your objective to make it short or long term. Simply said, the ultimate aim is to have profitable sales. Your website can be used as a tool for capturing leads for future sales – online or offline.
Three Basic Types of Web Sites
Sales Only – It focuses on one thing which is to close sales
List Building for Future Sales – It is used for future online sales. Generally, they offer free information to their subscribers and often move their prospects to customers through a marketing funnel.
Lead generation for Future Offline Sales – These websites are used to encourage future offline sales. They usually provide information about their products or services and answers to frequently asked questions and contact information. These are usually used by service professionals.
Choose the type of website that will help you to achieve your goal
Dedicated sales page
This is a direct marketing approach website which focused on closing online sales. Although it may have multiple pages such as FAQ, testimonials, about us, etc. It usually has a strong sales letter that leads to check out or add to shopping cart via paypal.
Single Opt In Page
Commonly known as squeeze page. This is a one page website to encourage visitors to add in their contact details in exchange for free information. The copy usually has a bulleted list of benefits, headline and strong call to action and an opt in box.
Membership Sites
Membership websites are usually very content driven and highly focused on a specific niche. Most often, paying subscribers are granted access to exclusive videos, forums, downloads, technical help and even free hosting. Though this is a tedious job when creating your own membership sites, there will be a monthly subscription fees for members who decided to stay on to get more information about your content.
Blogs
A common method for beginners to get started and to share their experiences and ideas by blogging. This way of approach often leads to selling their own products or affiliate products through emails for the list.
You can also offer RSS syndication feeds so people can subscribe and get updated to your new posts.
Select and Register Your Domain Name
A domain name is your business identity and act as a marketing tool for people to find your web pages. Many domain names can point to identical web sites or pages.
Before choosing a name, remember to keep in mind your target audiences and what they are hoping to get from your site, products or services because it’s best to choose a domain name that defines your business and its purpose. Also, if your goal is to create a long term online business, then you will want to pick a name that effectively brands you.
Your domain name should be
- Short and sweet
- Memorable
- Easy to pronounce
- Dot com – Try to find a domain name that has .com as many people assume that the end of the URLs ends with a .com and may not look further if they cannot find your site right away.
Choose a Company To Host Your Site
In order to select the right host for your site, find out what tools and services it supports and which one it doesn’t. There are a lot of choices but I will recommend hostgator. Why? Simply because it provides free transferring of data from your previous hosting company and you can find a lot of good reviews regarding the company. Also, there were no problems with this company throughout the past few years.
Choose A Template Or Blog
Selecting your site building is another big consideration and please decide carefully before hiring the colleague kid next door or your friend to build your site. Why? Because the best cost is not always least cost. The last thing you’ll need is a site that’s slow, unreliable and antagonistic to search engines. This doesn’t mean you should pay a fortune to get a professional web design company. You can look for high quality freelancer from elance that can build your site reasonably.
Before beginning this process, remember that speed, usability, surfablity (SEO), and professional design
Blogs
You might want to start a blog if you are cash-strapped or pressed for time. More and more online entrepreneurs and business owners are using blogs for their businesses. Blog owners start a conversation and invite visitors to comment. Blogs are taking on a whole new life as e-commerce tools for many reasons.
Firstly, they can generate more income if they’ve used as an extension of your current marketing efforts. They can help you to establish yourself in the industry by sharing your ideas and tips. It can gain visibility, gain more media attention and increase your qualified leads. Additionally, there are many people who earned a few thousands a month by blogging about their interest. The key of their success is based on three things.
- Readers – Online surfers looking for specific information are often directed to blogs by search engines.
- Content – Once there, the visitors read conversation that discuss the information they requested.
- Advertising- In addition to content, visitors see their ads for products related to their interest.
Blogs are managed by software that run on a website’s server. I love to use wordpress as my blogging platform as it provides flexibility and easy changes to my blog.
Here’s why blog make such great sense for entrepreneurs:
- Hosting costs little or nothing – There are many good, reputable companies who will host your blog for a small fee or absolutely free
- Save Time – Your site can be literally up and running in a manner of minutes and you won’t waste time going through a web developer every time to make changes
- Save money and still look professional – You can use design templates and themes (free or paid) which will ensure your site looks great without having to hire a web designer.
- Search engines love them!-Because a blog’s page are frequently updated and interlinked with other websites, they often rank higher in search results.
- Extremely versatile and can be used for almost any purpose.-Blogs are more spontaneous than other websites and encourage interaction between visitors and web owners.
- Can be published in multiple formats. - Because they’ve been stored in data base, you can easily add audio, videos, mp3, graphics, pictures, shopping carts, PDF files, and RSS feeds. Even better, blogs can be viewed on multiple portable devices like hand phones, Ipad, IPod ,etc.
I hope you have enjoyed this post on creating your online business step by step.
