Starting an Internet Business in 5 Steps

This Article covers the things you have to consider when starting an internet business. You have to gather enough information to decide on what to offer and how to promote your offer. Only then you are able to set up a reasonable business plan. If you have your plan stay focused and stick to it. Of course you should stay flexible and amend your plan where necessary. But don’t jump around from one model to another never finishing anything.

You might have heard there is a lot of money to make on the internet. When you are considering starting an internet business and browse through the web you might get overwhelmed by the mass of information out there. I was myself and set up a 5 step plan to overcome this.

When you are starting an internet business you should definitely plan what you are going to do. If not it’s quite doubtful that you will succeed. Remember that about 95% of all people who are starting an internet business fail. And the first reason is that they don’t have a solid plan and thorough understanding of what they are going to do. The second reason they fail is lack of persistence and staying focused.

Step 1

Before you even start planning starting an internet business you have to gather as much of information as possible about your undertaking. But beware of buying information products like mad. There are plenty of offers on the internet and the risk is high that you fall prey to the “shiny object syndrome” jumping from one product to the other and from one strategy to the next. The single best article I have seen to avoid this is by Kevin D. Browne on Ezine Articles although his subject is slightly different from mine.

In short he recommends going for the free stuff on the internet. As you normally have to opt in for a newsletter when ordering free e-books and courses he recommends creating free e-mail accounts for this on yahoo or hotmail. I recommend Viral Inbox to do so.

Then search on google for information on starting an internet business and read and study everything you can get your hands on (free offers, blog- and forum posts etc.) until you think you have enough information to make a couple of decisions.

Step 2

When it comes to earning money it always comes down to selling something, be it online or offline. You can sell physical goods, digital products like e-books, videos, audios, digital pictures etc. or you can sell services like translations, programming,

marketing or what most people do in their regular jobs (secretaries, plumbers, bricklayers, physicians, engineers etc.).

Of course you need expertise when you want to offer services. But do you need to have your own products to offer? The answer is no. The most popular business on the internet is affiliate marketing. The most lucrative affiliate marketing is to promote digital goods. You can make up to 75% commissions as an affiliate for e-books etc. Clickbank is a good address to start with. There is even a free tool for Clickbank to help you finding the best offers: CBSurge. If you decide on physical goods you can go into drop shipping. That is you recommend physical goods while they are shipped directly from the provider so you don’t’ have to buy them first and put them on stock which would cost you an awful lot of money.

When starting an internet business I highly recommend affiliate marketing. The only risk you have is having no success but you won’t loose any money.

Anyway you should choose something you are interested in. Otherwise it might become hard to stay interested until you succeed.

Now that you know what to offer you should think about how to promote your offer. Do you need a website of your own? No. While it is certainly beneficial to have one it is not necessary. There are lots of ways out on the internet to promote your offer. If you followed the recommendations above you should have a good overview on marketing methods.

With all this information decide on what you want to offer and how you want to promote your offer on the internet.

Step 3

When you took your decisions on starting an internet business it’s time to check the market and the competition. First of all choose some keywords people might search in google to find your offer. Choose keywords that describe your offer as exactly as possible. Then do a google search for your keywords. Put them in quotes, which means google returns the amount of pages with that exact term. This gives you an idea of your competition. Then go over to the google keyword tool and search for that keyword as well. Here you get information about the market you plan to enter starting an internet business, i.e. the number of monthly searches for that keyword. The key is finding keywords with maximum searches and minimum exact hits. When you did your research you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t find keywords with reasonable monthly search volume and lets say less than 100’000 pages with your exact phrase try different keywords or go to a different offer.

Step4

Only now, after you made your decisions and found a market with reasonable profitability and low competition I would decide on buying a product if you feel need for it. But consider the recommendation in the above article: If you think a product might be of help to your starting an internet business then search for that exact product and see whether there are reviews or comments. If it’s rated negatively don’t buy it. You’ll see a lot of crap out there on the internet.

Then you should set up your business plan with time frame and budget.

Step 5

Once you have set up a reasonable plan stick to it. Another reason why a lot of people fail starting an internet business is that they jump around from one model to the next, from one strategy to another and from one product to a different one. Stay focused! I don’t want to say that you shouldn’t tweak around amending your business plan over time but give it a real chance to succeed. And be patient! Give it a chance! It took a lot of successful internet marketers years to find out what not worked until they found something that worked starting an internet business.

There are other stories out there as well. The weirdest I have ever seen is: The one guy decided on starting an internet business. He read three hours through the posts on the warrior forum got a clickbank and another affiliate account which I can’t remember. Then he did some research with Market Samurai, bought five domains, set up the sites and wrote five articles for each focusing on ppa offers. After a month he earned 200$ a day and was hoping to reach 500$ a day soon. That is 6’000$ to 15’000 a month. I don’t know whether it’s fake but if it is true it’s really astonishing.

I hope this article was worth reading and now good luck with starting an internet business.

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