Top Online Business Resources
There are still many online business opportunities for solo internet entrepreneurs to start-up a profitable online business thanks to tools, services, and proven strategies freely available. You may not be the next competitor to eBay and Amazon, but you can create a good second income that you can grow will enable you to leave other employment and enjoy free time and financial security with the help of social media platforms in particular.
Find your niche
To start an online business, you want to choose a service or product to sell that will give you a profit. You may think that a certain product will be a roaring success, but always do some simple market research first. A Google search that returns very few results means it is unlikely there is much demand for what you are offering. When starting out business, you want a lot of competition in your chosen niche since you need a big pool from which to grab people.
Some sectors that have consistently remained popular are pet care; exercise programs; nutritional supplements and yoga. If you want to know what is trending right now, look at best-seller lists on Amazon and news media for articles and adverts. By choosing a low-risk niche product, you can start small and add more products.
Start Simple
Affiliate Marketing
The easiest way to earn money online is through affiliate marketing which is when you market and promote products for someone else on your own e-commerce site, whilst the company that created the product, or the retailer, deals with everything else from delivery, storage, refunds, and customer service. When an affiliated item is sold on your site, you receive a commission, usually at least five percent, though it depends on the product. Look online for an affiliate marketing program in the sector you want to focus on.
Drop shipping
Like affiliate marketing, drop shipping is also selling another company’s products. However, you process the orders for the manufacturer or wholesaler who then send the product directly to the customer. Your money is made from the difference between what you charge the customer and what you have to pay the drop-shipper.
White label products
You can put your own name and branding on a product that already exists and process orders as you would with drop-shipping. This works well for health-related products, like supplements. Creating your own physical product can take a lot of time and investment and still not succeed. However, creating your own eBooks, videos and audio books on a subject in which you have a lot of knowledge can be delivered online making it a low-cost option.
Create your own website
Once you have found your market and your product, you need an online presence on which to market and sell. There are plenty of free software and online programs to create a professional-looking website with a shopping cart, list building capabilities and blogging.
Some of these websites are free and offer ready-made templates that you just have to fill with your products and content and can update and change without any web development experience. From here you can use plug-ins for search engine optimization, marketing, analytics to track visitors to your site and a lot more. These companies also offer personalized domain names for a small fee.
Email marketing
When you have your product and an online presence, you need customers to survive. The best way to start is to build an email list. You can ask visitors to your website for their email address and send regular updates about your products, though you need to consider somethings like timings, so you do not get reported as spam. Offer all visitors to your landing page the chance to sign up for additional information, special offers, YouTube clips, and other valuable information.
In this way you can build a relationship with your customers that may not necessarily buy from you the first time they see your website, but once they get to know you, like you and trust you, the chances of a sale increase. All the free tips and advice you send will show – directly or subliminally - how their lives will improve by using your product, and you can add sales offers between these posts.
It is worth learning about consumer psychology so that you can write good sales copy, the principles of which you can use in every communication with customers. You can learn about writing copy or pay someone online to write this for you.
Drive traffic to your online business
Consistently adding content with value on your website and blog means it will be picked up by search engines like Google. This will raise your profile online for people searching for information on your topic, some of whom may sign up to join your mailing list. You can have a landing page just for signing up new customers or have a box on the right-hand side that makes it easy for people to join you.
Use social media to drive traffic to your website and build your list. With Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, you can set up a free account and post content related to your business. In this way, people can get to know the personality behind the product as you respond to requests, add content and send direct invitations to sign up on your site or buy products. Use all the freely available options to drive traffic before you consider paid advertising. This gives you the chance to tweak your website to make and be confident that your business is working well and making sales. Once you begin making money, you can consider paid advertising.
Finally, accept that you need to take time and effort to get a solid foundation for a business, but this will be a business that will last and bring in income for years to come.
