Many people dream of making passive income online or starting their own online small business, probably home based, how to make money online they ask?
Let’s face it there are an awful lot of us who dream of firing the boss and working in their PJ’s. Few succeed though the figures often quoted is that between 95% and 99% of people who start a blog or website fail to make any money doing it.
I guess that’s why some people are looking for the “business in the box solution”. The follow this plan and all will be well. After all most of us who are trying to make money on-line are doing it after spending years as good little employees. You know do what the boss tells you what to do, when to do it by, and then praises you for getting it done correctly – or not.
Business isn’t like that. On-line busines is different from real world business – but not as much as many people believe.
Why Do Small Businesses Fail?
Apart from cash flow issues, most small businesses fail because they can’t get enough customers. There is no demand for their service or product. Think of the local lady who makes beautiful handicrafts, but no one buys. Think of the coffee shop that makes great coffee – but is 1/2 empty because its tucked away in an uninviting backstreet. Or the geek who can fix your computer just like that – but doesn’t know how to explain to potential customers what he can do.
Now consider the on-line business version of these businesses:
♦the blogger who blogs about their passion for Ancient Roman Gladiators sports – they have a beautiful blog, with lots of great information and pretty pictures: but no one wants to buy anything there because they cam looking for information which they got in spades on the site;
♦the site which provides great baby gear at the right price – but no one can find the site because the site is called “Kute Kiddies Kool”, all the links to the site are by its name – and people who search search for “cheap baby clothes online” or “cheap organic cotton baby clothes”
♦the site which is developed by a design specialist – its full of cute visual effects and great graphics – but the search engine doesn’t know that the site is offering computer setup support in the Bay Area because Google can’t read flash or images.
Luckily on-line its very easy to work out whether you will have customer for your site or not – we call them searchers.
Simple Steps to Make Your On-line Business Work
- Decide whether or not you are in business. If you just want to make a few dollars from a blog – then you are not in business, you have a hobby.
- Work out which business model works for you: provide services (writing, technical, whatever) to others, develop sites which bring you in passive income, or use your on-line business to support, funnel visitors to your real-world business.
- Focus your website on keywords which a) get traffic and b) are buying keywords – terms people search for when they are looking to buy something not just for information.
- Check that there is not too much competition for your search terms: either use free tools or something like Market Samurai
- Decide on your method of monetization: either funnelling traffic to your real world business or getting paid by eBay or Amazon affiliates, other affiliates, promoting an e-book, promoting your own services or Adsense.
- Build a website which focuses on your chosen keywords: whether you use WordPress, handcode html, use MyStarterBlog or Dreamweaver – doesn’t matter – just do it -its the easiest part of the process. Make sure you on-page SEO focuses on your keywords i.e. get the keyword in your title, sub-headings and content.
- Get your site ranked in the search engines: get it ranked for your keywords by getting backlinks which anchor that term. Get backlinks from article marketing and supporting sites like today, hubpages and squidoo. Submit articles to ezine articles.
- Rinse and repeat.
So I have a question for you guys: what bit is so hard and scary that you can’t get started? Which bit makes people search for the simple, one process fits all, turn key system. This is being in business people; its scary, there is no one-size fits all that will work for everyone – otherwise no business would be able to hire an employee.
If you are looking for a supportive membership site which will help you succeed check out my review of Keyword Academy Video Crash Course