by Tyler Day
We live in an age where a majority of sales revenue is flowing through Internet-based sales. There are billions of people buying things online every day, spending hundreds of millions of dollars. Want to tap into the ever-growing revenue being created on the Internet? Start your own online business in 12 easy steps:
Decide what to sell
You should pick a niche that interests you. Also, you will want to take into consideration what is already popular online. What are people buying lots of? What do people actually need? Once you find a “niche” with a lot of buyers, create your business around that.
Find your target audience
Find out who exactly would be the perfect person to buy what you are selling. For example, if you are going to make an information product about weight loss, you will only want to be targeting this specific interest on your website. I.E. you shouldn’t post an article about loosing weight, then the next day post an article about your cat.
Build a website for your product or services.
Of course, if you plan on starting an online business, you will need a website set up for people to learn about your product/services and actually buy them.
Drive traffic
You must get more people to look at your website in order to make sales. You want to be bringing as many targeted (interested) visitors to your site as possible. There are many different platforms you can use for paid advertising. One great way to get cheap clicks to your website is by using Facebook ads. You will be able to drive interested prospects to your website for pennies.
Leverage social media
Building a Facebook business fan page is a great way to do this. You can also use paid advertising to build likes and followers on your business page. If you build up to 100,000 likes on your Facebook page through paid advertising, you will be able to monetize that page by posting articles about your product and services to obtain more customers. Once you build a fan page with a following, you will be able to turn the ads into cold hard cash, as long as you have something to offer of value to your fanbase.
Create an automated sales funnel
Your product should be something that can be delivered electronically, like an ebook or an online course. This is the best business model for massive growth – make sales and fulfill orders on a large scale without physically mailing anything. After the customer purchases from your website, he or she should immediately have access via a back office, or by having the product emailed. If your business model includes a physical product, make sure to have a system in place to process and fulfill orders.
Use paid advertising to increase sales
The fastest way to increase your overall revenue is paid advertising to get customers. If selling an ebook on how to lose weight quickly, set up a targeted ad campaign using search engines, Facebook or banner ads.
Build an email list
When you are spending money to drive people to your website, collect their email before showing them whatever you are selling. Once they land on your website, you should prompt them via pop-up to enter in their email address to receive something for free in return (free report, free video, etc.). Ninety-eight percent of your customers won’t buy what you are selling on their first visit to your website, so collect their email address to follow up continually. After they enter their email, you should direct them toward whatever you are selling.
Monetize your email leads
Once you send potential customers to your website and collect email leads, you should monetize those leads. Use constantcontact.com (as an example) to collect all of your leads in one place, and email a promotion for either the same product you originally tried to sell them or a related product.
Compile a buyers’ list
Once sales are rolling, create a separate list of actual customers. As you make more products in the future, these will become your most valuable customers because they have already gotten value from you.
Have multiple products to sell
Your first product may not resonate with everyone, so it’s always good to have an arsenal of products and services to offer, not only for more front-end sales, but also to increase sales from existing buyers.
Outsource menial tasks
Need to have a website designed for you, or a sales page made for one of your products? These are tasks easily and inexpensively outsourced (from companies like upwork.com and others). You can only wear so many hats as a business owner, and you must focus on what is most important – creating valuable products and making more sales.
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