Lesson 1 - Introduction
Building an Online Business

An online business on the Internet provides unlimited opportunity to go into business for yourself. With hard work and dedication you can earn enough money to be self sufficient, work from home and be your own boss.

It has never been easier than it is today to build an independent lifestyle that can balance you and your family’s income needs with a healthy lifestyle choice and life-work balance.

Forget get rich quick. Forget coming up with the next Google, Facebook or Amazon. Sure you might strike the next seam of Internet gold .. but that’s a bonus.

What we are talking about here is a genuine business that you can put your heart and soul into that with careful nurturing will provide you with a healthy income and a capital asset that will return your investment many times over.

The beauty of building an Internet business is that it carries far less financial risk than opening up, say a shop in your local town or some other ‘bricks and mortar’ business.

Your biggest risk is not being rewarded for all the effort you will need to put in to be successful, but then that’s true of ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses too.

One of the biggest advantages starting up an online business is the small set-up cost. You can be set-up for as little as a few hundred dollars. Of course this doesn’t include the cost of your time.

You should keep a record of your time, though, reasonably costed, as a possible tax deduction against your future online income.

My advice to any future net entrepreneur or ‘netpreneur’ is to think in terms of a three year roadmap.

In the first year a lot of effort must go into building content for your site – content is king, no doubt about it. And it really isn’t that hard to find content for a site that has your heart in it.

During the first year you shouldn’t worry too much about the income you receive from monetizing your site. Indeed, if you try to soon to monetize your site … you will be very disappointed. The time to think about monetization is when you have built a great site with plenty of good content and you are getting plenty of visitors coming to your site through search engines or personal recommendations.

Naturally, if your online business is getting high numbers of regular visitors from just down the road or further afield you can monetize earlier. Some sites have achieved this in a matter of a few months because their interests are shared by large numbers of people and they have put the time in.

Often the simplest of ideas work the best. One example is ‘putting on birthday parties for children. If by the second year your visitor traffic has not reached a level which, when monetized, would support your income aspirations, then it is time to take stock of the situation. Maybe radical surgery is needed, maybe the niche idea you have chosen is simply to small.

However, this is a time for caution…why? Because some small narrow niches can take a long while to build, but can ultimately bring in sufficient income to warrant their existence and repay your efforts with little or no competition!

An important aspect of these first two steps on your roadmap to having a successful business on the Internet is the process of building trust.

Sometimes this 'trust building' is referred to as pre-selling as opposed to simply selling. Here is one of the main differences between your customers and those that might walk in off the street to say a ‘shop’ and one of the main advantages a ‘bricks and mortar’ business has over an online business. Yes there are some!

A bricks and mortar business has a degree of solidity that your online business has to work hard to emulate. If I see an item I want to purchase in a shop window and chose to buy something in that shop. I know I can come back tomorrow and there is a good chance the shop will still be there. If my product is defective in any way, I might not get my money back, but there is all likelihood that I will be able to get a credit note to purchase another item.

Such trust is hard but not impossible to achieve online…but takes time. This is one of the main reasons that establishing a successful online business cannot ever be a get rich quick scheme.

So how do you achieve this level of ‘trust’? Be prepared to spend time thinking this through…you have an ideal ‘mystery customer’... you know the fake customers that check out ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses for their owners…. It's You and your friends!

Beyond that there are many proven pre-selling techniques that will move you along the road to financial success faster. For example, the honesty with which you write your content and having genuine links in from other sites and social networks, note the word genuine!

Everyone likes something for nothing by providing truly valuable free items that your visitors like and respect you for can build the trust you need to provide something for which you do charge.

Personally, I call this running naked through virtual fields. Your natural honesty must shine through…you are honest aren’t you? Good then we will continue!

In the third year, and remember it COULD be much less time for you if you go about things sensibly, with the right expectations and follow the rules…Yes! There are rules! …in the third year you should be seeing real rewards for your efforts. From now on you are in maintenance mode.

With your new found skills (you are building life skills) and a few handy tools and services you will find that maintaining your online business should be largely automatic and to a large extent a self-sustaining income generator for you.

If you started your online business because you wanted to stay at home with the kids or because you wanted to remain active in your retirement or needed that extra income to finance you through college, wanted to travel the world or wanted to give up your day job…this is when you can start to live your dreams.

So let’s conclude this part of the story by reminding you of the process. Build great content..content that interests you intensely and attracts like-minded individuals from down the street or from around the world.

Write and build your content in a totally honest and genuine way with valuable free offers that encourages trust in you and your business from the start.

Don’t worry if that trust doesn’t come immediately, keep running naked in the virtual fields and people will soon trust you…if they don’t lock you up first!

With good pre-selling and a solid following you have the traffic you need to gently begin to sell as well.

Hopefully at this stage you are selling something as a trusted and respected friend. You have a relationship, albeit virtual, with your visitors and they know that if they have any problems they can come back tomorrow, you will still e there and you will see them right. Monetization takes time .. expect it, enjoy it and benefit from it for the long term. Memory Aid CTPM , Content (Interest), Traffic, Pre-sell (Trust), Monetize (for whatever you like).

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Memory Aid

CTPM - Content (Interest), Traffic, Pre-sell (Trust), Monetize (for whatever you like).

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