Ready to begin or ramp up your current online business?
With so many tools and one-click promises, it’s super easy to get overwhelmed with choices. When you experience that, one or all of these things can happen: 1) you waste time on tasks that only serve to drain your energy 2) you waste dollars on tools that don’t work and 3) you avoid doing anything out of shear mental exhaustion!
b) waste time on activities that drain your energy more than they increase your profits or
Build Upon What you Own: Your Blog
Build Upon What you Own: Your Blog. There are lots of web platforms to use such as Scribd, Blogger, Weebly, Facebook, and YouTube. How do you know where to plant the flag for your online business? The answer is: somewhere that you have the most control.
Why is “control” so important? Just like in the real world, there’s always a risk to building a business on someone else’s real estate. On someone else’s terms. Sure, you can get a lease; but when that contract comes to an end, you can be left scrambling for a new home. You have to think ahead. I always way plan for the worse-case-scenario and then get on with the business of business. For Online Business activities, that means paying attention to building your list and the relationship with that list.
If your business is online, then this can happen as well. So the best practice is to have a “home” online that you own or have the most control. That means a blog. One that you own, with a domain name you’ve paid for, and where you have paid for hosting. Your blog is your main hub. It’s your content platform. And it’s the foundation of your online business growth. Here are the online tools you should be using –
With so many platforms to choose from online such as Blogger, Weebly, Facebook, YouTube and so many more, how do you know where to really “build” your online business? The answer can be found where you have the most control now and into the foreseeable future.
Just like in the real world, the more control you have in your business the better. There’s always some risk when you build your online empire using on someone else’s real estate. If your business is online, then this can happen too. The answer? Create an online “home” that you have control of. That means your own blog, with your own domain, that you have hosted on your account.
www.Bluehost.com
Build Your Customer Base
You’re primary goal is not traffic because traffic is not enough! Once your potential customers click away, you may be forgotten…no matter how awesome you and your content are…UNLESS…
You provide a simple way to join your community. This is achieved partly through an opt-in page (the mechanics of list building) and partly by content (the art of list building). They need a “why” and a “way” for opting in!
This is your virtual guest book and it is a key component to building a business online versus having a really fun and time consuming blogging hobby. The website tool you can use to quickly incorporate great looking squeeze pages is www.LeadPages.com.
Not long after you start populating your website with content in the form of video, articles, graphics, and trainings you’re going to wonder how you can actually make money with all this information you are creating. The answer is: Selling!
Not long after you start building content for the web, you will wonder how you can actually make money with all this information you are creating. The answer is:
You gotta sell something!
How you make money depends on your business model and your niche. You may sell a product, a service, or a piece of software that’s going to benefit your future customers in some way, shape or fashion.
www.ThemeForest.net
www.Odesk.com
www.ThemeForest.net
So how to you set it all up? Don’t get stuck here…hire someone to do it for you! You can find someone who does this stuff for a living that will take that template and make it come to life on your site!
Once you invest in the templates don’t get stuck because you don’t know HTML! There are plenty of talented people that can help you with coding and implementation of your templates.
How to you increase your company value?
Offer extra value on a subscriber-only or paid basis!
Paid content requires that you protect that content behind a “wall” or password so that only those who have paid for the content have access to it. A great freelancer can help you put the moving parts for this together. The tools you can use to put it together are:
WordPress.org
Themeforest.net
www.member.wishlistproducts.com
Now it’s Time to Put it Together!
There you have it! While you may use other tools, these are four of the basics for building an online business.
This information, and the “secret sauce” you bring to your business, is what you need to get everything on track. This could be the beginning of a better business!
Want to find out more about Essential Online Business Tools, then get the best video marketing training here: James Wedmore online marketing strategist and results-getter!