How to start an online business in 4 steps:
- Choose your niche and business model
- Study your product and your target market
- Build an online presence
- Establish a relationship with your clients
Starting a small business online without experience has never been easier. With the help of digital tools and resources available on the internet, all you need is a computer and a stable internet connection. There’s also never been a perfect time to launch an online business since we live in the golden age of technology and internet. Here are some reasons you should start an online business today:
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The best part about it is you literally make money for each converted sale while doing absolutely nothing. Local lead generation requires no maintenance at all, which makes it a stable source of passive income that’s sustainable and profitable for any aspiring online entrepreneur.
How to Start an Online Business in 4 Steps
1. Choose your business idea
The first and most crucial step in setting up an online business, or any business entity for that matter, is choosing a business idea.
Here are some steps you can take to help you identify what business idea to go for:
Focus on a problem or need that you want to address
Setting up a good online business often lies in finding a problem or need to address. Instead of forcing yourself to come up with a business plan out of thin air, try to formulate a solution to a problem or need. For instance, you can analyze if there are students in your community that are struggling in their academics. From there, you can start an online tutoring service in order to address that need.
Consider your interests and passions
Finding a business idea that suits your interests and passions is extremely crucial in ensuring the success of your businesses venture because it will dictate how much time, effort, and money you’re willing to put. You wouldn’t invest everything you have on something you’re not passionate about, right?
Evaluate your resources
As discouraging as it may seem, evaluating your resources is an essential part of developing your business idea because it allows you to lay out a businesses strategy that fits your budget. Maybe you want to start an online eCommerce store that sells all sorts of household products, but you don’t have the money for the infrastructure needed, such as a warehouse or a stockroom.
Being able to recognize your limitations during the planning phase puts you in a position to strategize a cost-effective business idea.
You can also ask yourself some guiding questions to help you come up with a business structure:
2. Study your product and target market
Studying your product and conducting target market research is a good way to streamline the whole selling process because it allows you to create the perfect product and offer them to the right people. Not only does this allow you to develop a product or service that works, it also puts you in a position to sell more effectively by connecting you to the appropriate buyers and consumers.
Finding a product or service that every person on the planet needs is almost an impossible task. Developing a product and conducting market research is extremely crucial in ensuring that your product or service finds its way to the right buyers. A successful online business idea will inevitably be influenced by how well you research about your product and target market.
Here are some steps you can take to help you research about your product and conduct market research:
Build and outline your product
List down what features you want to include, what variations it has, what benefits or advantages does it provide, what pricing plans will it have, and everything else that will help you define what you want your product to be.
Study your target market
This includes analyzing customer demographics, consumer buying patterns and trends, product insights and feedback, and even customer psychographics or the behaviors and attitudes of your potential clients. Once you’ve analyzed all the necessary data, you can create buyer persona/s to help you understand your target market even more. A buyer persona is a representation or fictional version of your ideal customer.
Gather data about the market
Conduct surveys and interviews to help you study the market and identify consumer needs, pain points, preferences and buying patterns. Not only will this allow you to have a deep understanding of your clients, it also gives you all the information you need to come up with a product or service that appeals strongly to your target market.
Analyze your competitors
Studying your competitors is a good way to not only identify their strengths and weaknesses, but their own strengths and weaknesses as well. You can look at their products and services, study their online and offline marketing campaigns, compare their performance with yours, and many others.
What sets apart a good company from a great one is being able to neutralize weaknesses and capitalizing on strengths.
3. Build an online presence
One of the most important aspects of having an online business is being able to establish an online presence through the use of digital marketing. Having a good understanding of digital marketing is important because it will serve as the backbone of your presence on the internet. Without it, potential clients won't be able to see your products or services. Tasks that come with building an online presence include:
Your online presence will serve as your brand online. Your brand exists because it will serve as the face of your online business, which means consumers will care a lot about what your branding is because it is how they will remember you. Your brand will leave a lasting impression that will ultimately dictate whether your clients will conduct business with you or not.
If you do not have money to run paid ads or pay-per-click advertising, you can try search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of growing your website using specific practices that increase organic website traffic and user engagement. Unlike paid ads, SEO is completely free. However, SEO typically takes time before any results become visible.
Here are some common SEO practices you can do to improve your website’s search engine performance and visibility:
Keyword research
Keyword research is the process of identifying the best keywords for a specific niche or topic and embedding them in your ads or website content. For instance, if you’re a company that sells frozen meals, using related keywords such as “frozen food”, “frozen food store”, or “easy freezer meals” will ramp up your visibility because it tackles all relevant search terms surrounding your main keyword.
You can do keyword research using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, and many others.
Internal linking
Internal linking is the process of linking pages found within your website to one another, creating a whole web of pages that are interconnected to each other. Not only does this allow users to navigate through your website instead of bouncing off, it also gives Google the impression that you know exactly what you’re talking about because you have multiple articles that are linked to each other.
4. Establish a relationship with your clients
Having a relationship with your clients plays a huge role in ensuring that your business not only becomes successful, but also sustains the success you achieve. Even after a client pays for a product or service, keep in mind that it does not end there - Instead, providing excellent customer service and attending to their concerns is the best way to ensure that they are satisfied with the outcome of the transaction and are bound to become repeat clients.
Customer service also leaves a lasting impression on your clients, which then translates to positive reviews. Reviews are what will ultimately make or break your business. A study by PowerReviews shows that around 99% of online consumers look at review before purchasing a product or availing a service. If a potential customer sees that your online business has mixed reviews or no reviews at all, chances are they won’t conduct business with you. Positive reviews also increase your credibility and legitimacy, which inevitably boosts sales and search engine rankings.
At the end of the day, having a product or service that sells simply won’t cut it. We live in an era where having a good reputation online is what will ultimately determine the success of an online business.
3 Reasons You Should Start An Online Business
1. There are little to no startup costs
Starting an online business typically does not require a lot of capital since everything can be done over the internet. Unlike traditional businesses, you don't have to worry about rent, utilities, and other overhead costs that come with a physical store. You can even start a business with absolutely no money. Here are some examples:
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a business model that works similarly like a traditional store that sells products. However, dropshipping is an eCommerce business that doesn’t require you to actually store your products or keep any inventory. Instead, you can ship products from a supplier directly to a customer that places an order.
Simply put, you only have to set up an online store or eCommerce platform and sell products on demand, which doesn’t require you to spend money to get started. You can do this on various platforms, such as Shopify and eBay.
Freelancing
Freelancing is the process of providing services and getting paid for each accomplished task. Unlike regular employees that work for a single company, freelancers can work for multiple clients at once, which makes it a very lucrative business where you can make money from multiple streams of income. You don’t have to put up any money to get started because all you will need is your skills and knowledge.
Examples of freelancing jobs include social media marketing, copywriting, video editing, email marketing, and many others.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest business models on the internet that involves promoting the products of other businesses and making commissions every time someone purchases a product or service. This is usually done using an affiliate link that redirects to landing pages or product pages containing the product or service that’s being sold. The affiliate marketer can post the affiliate link on their website, blog, or social media platforms.
Not only is this business model easy, it also does not require you to put up any startup capital because all you have to do is promote the products or services of other businesses and make money every time they purchase through your link. If you're not in affiliate marketing, check Ad Agency Master Program that teaches how to build a music business.
2. You’re not limited to a typical 9 to 5 job
Unlike traditional employees that work 9 to 5 jobs, starting an online business allows you to work anytime and anywhere, giving you more time to pursue interests outside of work and spend more time with your family. It also opens up lots of opportunities to generate money from different income streams, which makes it a very profitable venture for aspiring online entrepreneurs.
You can even make money passively, which is a benefit that traditional 9 to 5 jobs do not have. With regular employment, you have to work 8 hours a day, every day, just to make money. Having an online business, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to make more money while working fewer hours, or even not working at all on some occasions.
3. The entire world is your customer
Having an online business means selling a product or service to people on the internet. The number of people who use the internet, which is around 5.16 billion or 64.4% of the entire world’s population, are all your potential clients. Here are some statistics that show just how promising an online business can be:
Not only are online industries already massive, they’re also expected to keep growing, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Almost every individual on the planet uses the internet, which means the demand for online businesses will always be there.
So, if you really want to build an online business and will invest in a course to have some guidance. You can check my article about the Startup Society. It is an online business course that will help you choose the best online business for you.
Conclusion: Will Having an Online Business Help Me Attain Financial Freedom?
Having an online business will help you attain financial freedom, but it’s not as easy as you think. While there are certainly a handful of advantages that come with running an online business, there will also be risks that should be considered before any decision are made. On top of that, you will also have to put in the work if you want your online business to eventually take off and flourish.
You also have to keep in mind that finding an online business that requires you to put up some money will ultimately be a better choice than a business that does not need any startup capital. Most business models will not be profitable and sustainable unless you put in some form of investment. Making money online can be attained by finding a business model that has reasonable capital costs because it is those that will ultimately produce higher profit margins and lead to passivity.
Why Local Lead Generation Is the Best Online Business
If you’re looking for an online business that requires you to invest money, but has the potential to return insane profits, you might want to look into local lead generation program. Local lead generation is an online business that involves building a website, ranking it on Google using search engine optimization, allowing local companies to use your website to generate leads, and making money for each lead that is converted to a sale.
The best thing about local lead generation is that it requires little to no maintenance, which means you can generate passive income while also being able to spend time with your loved ones and give more attention to other things outside of work. I have sites from 2014 that still make me over $2000 every month, and I barely even touch them.
If you’re looking to finally attain financial freedom and stability but don’t know how, local lead generation might be the answer to your problems.
