What does an Online Business Mean to You
Just imagine no more 9-5 businesses; no more bosses; no more nose to the grindstone. Consider the bliss of working from home. The thought of staying in your dressing gown all day while money drops into your personal bank account. Or how about lying on a tropical beach any time you want. Cruising on a luxury liner or consider any other exotic holiday. When you get home your car is dirty so you go to the garage and buy a new car. Having built a seven-figure business, you sign for a Bentley or top of the range Mercedes without finance. All this can be yours by starting an online business selling products of services.
- Do This, Get Rich! Twelve Things You Can Do Now To Gain Financial Freedom
- An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula To Live The Life Of Your Dreams
- Break The System: Escape the Rat Race, Start a Business, Travel the World
- Some fool-proof methods that took me from exhausted, depressed, broke and overwhelmed to £10k per month in 30 days.
These are some of the headlines that you will see as you search for that secret formula for your business website. Designed to earn you the life style of the stars.
Imagine the population of China and India all using the Internet every day. Almost 2.5 billion people use a search engine to log onto the Internet every day. Facebook alone has 1.5 billion active users. Everything we do is in some way controlled by the Internet. From Air Travel to paying for goods in a supermarket. There have never been so many potential leads for your business. But is it like the headlines above?
Just look at your life style and ask how many times the Internet influences what you have and what you do.
Building a sustainable business that reaches out to these leads is easier said than done. As you set out on your voyage of discovery you get contact with some Guru who invites you to start an online business. They will share their way of making six figures a month and require no effort on your part. They hone their skills in copywriting to reel in the unsuspecting. No matter how many short-cuts and cheat sheets they have, they are all geared to do one thing. To make you reach for your credit card and spend money so they can earn their six figures income.
I attend many meetings in my business. I am amazed how many people talk about the product or service they have bought. The programmes, software and e-books that gather dust on their shelves to find the secret.
When you see these adverts just take a step back and ask yourself if their method is so wonderful would they share it?
Is the Internet full of philanthropic individuals?
There are some good honest trainers and courses out there, I know many of them and will share some on this site. But for every good one there are ten only interested in parting you from your money.
Here are some difficult realities of building an online business.
They exaggerate the results of their online business.
Every day in my inbox I receive countless offers from people who want to help me earn a fortune. They want to build my personal social media presence or my email list by using their services. There are companies who will sell you lists of names and email addresses to market to. The trouble is that numbers do not result in customers. If you fail to build relationships with your customers your income will not materialise.
In my career before the Internet I ran a sales force of direct sales people. They achieved their business in many ways but the most successful way, as opposed to the lowest success rate, was easy to identify. Those who cold called had to call on average 10 people to make an appointment and had to go on 5 or 6 appointments to make a sale. Those who asked their clients for an introduction to the clients friends and family were selling almost one on one. Appointments made through introduction resulted in an appointment almost every time. Those appointments resulted in a sale 9 times out of 10.
Why?
The answer is simple, people buy from someone they know and trust. They knew their friends would not introduce them to someone who was dishonest or untrustworthy. They developed a relationship almost before a meeting took place.
You can buy thousands of names and true if you have a deal and mail one thousand people, you will make one or two sales. But you could also get one or two cancellations.
If you spend time building a relationship by offering good advice and information. Then taking your time introduce a product you are recommending you will have far more success.
If you would accept my advice and support, and that is all it can be for you are your own person. Forget mailing lists, they are part of the scammers arsenal. You build a sustainable business one person at a time.
Give without thought of getting something back.
The declared results from their online business are often generated
With modern digital technology tools, it is easy to create bank statements showing a seven-figure business.
Check photos on a website that inflates real figures. How many websites do you come across that shows you the earnings of individuals way beyond your present situation? The sad reality is everyone in the Internet world is not honest. They often inflate their earnings to impress you and get you reaching for your credit card.
Buying into their ethos will only result in shelves and computer disks full of worthless and many times the expensive junk. The adage you only get what you pay for is not always correct. I know an Internet Entrepreneur who sells e-books for $99. The information inside was available without cost on the web if you were willing to search for it.
The trouble is people want instant success and they believe they can get it for less than $100.
Repeating what others do does not always work in an online business.
Another method you see promoted invites you to just cut and paste information to guarantee success. That is not plagiarism as they tell you to cut and paste. However, it’s not good either unless you believe that you are the only person to cut and paste that piece of work. Of course, you are not.
Google looks at your website.
It checks your content against other content on the Web. If it is identical it looks to see which is the oldest. The oldest gets the credits and ranking.
Some people will tell you that it is also duplicate content. It is not. Duplicate content is where you have the same content elsewhere on your website. Or the same content on another of your sites that link to your main site.
At one time is was common practice for an online entrepreneur to build a site.
Then build dozens of one or two-page sites linking back to the main site.
This does not work today. The only back links that work are genuine links from sites that relate to your site as far as subject material. But I will talk about back link generating in another article so watch out for that one.
The only time I take note of the content on another site is when I examine the top ten sites for my keyword or phrase. I want to know what gets them to the top rank on Google. How can I improve what they do, but let me cover that elsewhere.
Do you need to buy coaching to run a successful online business?
Finally you will receive offers of coaching to short cut your route to success
This is where you have to do your homework. You will find offers that look good and inexpensive, but they usually result in little information.
How do they make money? By offering a upsell for other products and services with a deadline date. A date when the price will increase by a large amount. You must act now to safeguard the low price.
You will see a site that offers a deal with an increasing price unless you take immediate action. The first question I ask myself is how long has the site been up. I can guarantee they were using the same words 6 months or a year ago.
They want to sell so they will not put a deadline on the sales product or service. They advertise that there are only 10 places left. Never let that put pressure on you, they sell those 10 places day after day.
Watch out for business ideas using marketing speak. “Living the millionaire lifestyleâ€, etc. If I see this on a website I go on to the next. Compare some of the wild claims made on websites to Course providers such as Alison ( I should say I have no connection with this company).
Once again you can find some great information on the Internet free of charge Alison is such a site.
So think before you spend money find out what is available to help you build a sustainable and viable online business.