THE

TO

AN

DEFINITIVE

BUSINESS

STARTING

GUIDE

ONLINE

SPECIAL ISSUE

This guide was created by Marcus Taylor of ventureharbour.com

Marcus Taylor is the founder and CEO of Venture Harbour.

He is a multi award-winning young entrepreneur and international speaker. In 2013, Marcus won the award for Young Professional of the Year at the UK Search Awards, held at the Emirates Stadium in London. A few months later he was also awarded Young Visionary of the Year at MIDEM in Cannes.

Prior to launching Venture Harbour, Marcus built the Worlds first scientifically valid comfort zone calculator, which he has spoken about at Oxford University, TEDxMelbourne, and Awesomeness Fest.

SPECIAL ISSUE

Over the next decade,

another three billion people

are expected to gain access

to an Internet connection, and

begin contributing to this online

economy.

As the world population

spends more of their hard-earned

income online, the opportunity

for entrepreneurs to build wealth

from starting an online business

is abundant.

Over the past six years Ive

started nine online businesses.

Not all of them have worked

out how I hoped, but with every

business I either succeeded or

learned a valuable lesson.

I created this guide to help my

friends, family, and any budding

entrepreneurs out there start

their first online business in an

affordable and safe way, while

avoiding many of the common

pitfalls.

This article is extremely long

and in-depth, so I dont expect

you to read all of it. Feel free to

skip to the section thats most

relevant to where youre at

using the links below. If youre

completely new to starting an

online business, Id recommend

bookmarking it and working

through it in stages.

Over $3 trillion change hands

every single day.ITS ESTIMATED THAT

OVER $650 MILLION OF THIS IS EXCHANGED

DAILY BETWEEN ONLINE BUSINESSES AND THE 2.9 BILLION INTERNET-ENABLED PEOPLE ON

OUR PLANET.

Whats in this guide?

What online business should you create?

How to setup your online business for under $4/month

How to make your first sale

Summary & Comments

Press on any of the titles to jump straight to the topic you want to view.

1

2

3

Chapter

What constitutes a good niche?Analysing your competitors & the opportunity in a nicheHow stiff is your competition?How will you make money from your online business?How much money can you make in your niche?

Deciding on a name for your online businessRegistering a free domain name, web hosting, and install-ing WordPressDesigning your website & logoRegistering social media profilesCreating an online store & merchant accountJoining your first advertising / affiliate networkSetting up Google Analytics

The three systems to build a successful online businessMy first (and accidentally) successful online businessThe #1 skill every entrepreneur should learnFeedback is more important than making the saleBuilding your audience

AN ONLINE BUSINESS?

T. harv eker is known for saying that our results are like the fruits that grow on a tree, in that the quality of our fruits are determined by the quality of our roots. In literal terms, the quality of our thoughts determine the quality of our actions. The quality of our actions determine the quality of our results.

I believe that the first step in building

a successful business is to understand

our roots. Why do you want to build

an online business? Whats motivating

you? Without a fire in your belly, you

wont have the required drive to build a

successful business.

So why do you want to build an online

business? In my experience, the following

reasons are common.

To earn some extra

passive income on

the side of a main job.

To be able to afford to quit a job

you dislike.

To work on a project

that youre passionate

about.

To become financially

free.

Why do you want to start

For me, I began building websites in high school to earn extra pocket money. I was playing in a band at the time, and was saving up to pay for studio time and to promote our music.

Starting an online business is expensive

Whats stopping you?

Now that weve identified whats driving

you, lets figure out whats holding you back.

When I talk to new online entrepreneurs I

often hear a lot of BS excuses. Before we get

started, I want to totally debunk them.

Totally false. I hired a developer to build

WhatIsMyComfortZone.com for $80. It went

viral and led to a TEDx talk. In this post, Ill

talk through how you can set up an online

business for under $4/month.

Years ago, starting a business was

expensive. To connect with customers you

needed a physical location, which could

easily cost over $1,000 per month.

Today, the risk of building a business

is greatly reduced. Anyone can start a

business online for under $4, and serve the

2.9 billion people around the World who

have an Internet connection.

7 / 4 8 T h e D e f i n i t i v e G u i d e t o S t a r t i n g a n O n l i n e B u s i n e s s

Wrong. In fact, by the end of

this blog post youll have an

online business. Building your

customers and traffic does take

time, but its part of the journey.

If you dont think you have

enough time to build an online

business, then youre right

you probably dont. But in my

experience even the busiest

people make time for the things

they truly want.

We can all make an extra

hour in the day, even if it

requires waking up earlier, or

watching less Game of Thrones.

One extra hour per day is 365

extra hours per year, which is

the equivalent of 9 weeks of

full time work. What can you

achieve in 9 weeks?

Building an online business takes a long time

But isnt it reallyhard to make anonline businesssuccessful?

It depends. It mostly depends on how

well informed you are, on the niche

you choose, and how you approach it.

Ive seen people who are near-clueless

about online marketing make $1,000s

just months after setting up a blog or

YouTube channel. They were the lucky

ones. Ive also seen people after three

years of perseverance still struggling to

make a profit.

The difficulty with building an online business

comes down to how well informed you are and your

roots. With the right knowledge, its quite easy.

Ive tried my best to ensure that this guide will set

you on the right path to making sales quickly and

affordably.

9 / 4 8 C h a p t e r 1

W H AT O N L I N E B U S I N E S S S H O U L D YO U C R E AT E ?

WHAT ONLINE BUSINESS SHOULD YOU CREATE?

chap

ter

My first online business was The Musicians Guide. It started as a hobby of mine, as I was enormously passionate about music marketing. While it did okay in terms of revenue, music marketing just isnt a very lucrative niche. Good idea, bad niche.

Similarly, I see far too many ambitious people venture out to build a business out of travel or recipe blogging.

Those niches are so saturated that its virtually impossible to make a significant amount of money from them today.

The biggest mistake that first-time online entrepreneurs make is choosing a good idea in a crap niche, or a crap idea in a good niche. I am just as guilty as anyone for this.

You must care about it.

You must be able to become the authority on it.

You must be able to differentiate yourself.

Your niche must be commercial.

You must fulfill a need.

So, what sort of online business should you create?

IN MY EXPERIENCE, A GOOD NICHE TICKS ALL OF THESE BOXES:

SPECIAL ISSUE

Lets go through each

of these in detail, as this is incredibly important to

get right.

Would you be willing to write about your niche every day for six months without being paid a penny? If you can answer yes, then you can tick this box and move on.

You must care about your niche

Now, Im not saying that

you wont receive a penny

for six months. I am, however,

saying that growing your online

business takes time. There will

be times where you work your

butt off with very little to show

for it.

Thats why you need to care

about your niche. When

you care, you will have the

willpower to get you through

the tough times. Passion can

also be smelt from a mile away.

If you dont care, your readers

or customers wont care either.

You must be able to become the authority in your niche

What can you be the best in the World at?

If that seems like a scary question to answer,

zoom in. While it may be unrealistic right now

to be the most authoritative blogger on raw

food, you probably could become the authority

on raw food desserts.

There are many reasons why this is

important. They all boil down to the fact that

online business is a winner takes majority game.

The majority of traffic and revenue in any niche

will be going to the market leader. All of their

competitors will then be fighting over the

minority.

The minority is a tough place to be. In my

opinion, youre better off owning the majority

of a smaller niche than the minority of a

massive niche.

Choose a niche that you are credible and able

to be the authority in.

Now, there are a ton of

health food and skincare

bloggers and online

businesses out there. What

makes her different?

Few skincare bloggers

can look at the list of

ingredients on the back of

a shampoo and understand

how each chemical or

ingredient interacts with

the body. As a trained

pharmacist she not only has

credibility and authority,

but she also has her

differentiator.

When everyone zigs, zag.

When everyone zags, zig.

A few weeks ago I was helping a friend start her first blog. Shes a pharmacist with a passion for understanding how different foods and skincare products affect the body at a biological level.

You must be able to differentiate yourself

You must fulfil a need

If you cant confidently say yes to all three,

adjust your niche idea.

Lets take this website as an example.

Do people have a problem? Yes according to Googles Keyword Planner (well discuss

this later), there are hundreds of thousands of

people searching for information on how to

build and market online businesses.

Do people in your desired niche have a problem? Can you solve it for them? Does solving it involve a commercial transaction taking place?

Can we solve it for them? Yes we regularly write about things

like the best web hosting to use,

or how to recover from a Google

penalty. Our blogging is based

on case studies and practical

experience that weve had with

our own clients and online

businesses. In other words, were

helping people solve problems

that weve already had to solve

ourselves.

Does solving these problems involve a commercial transaction taking place? Sometimes, yes. While most of our posts are

written just to establish Venture

Harbour as a trustworthy

source of information on digital

marketing, we occasionally receive

a small commission when we refer

readers to paid services such

as those in this post on email

marketing software.

Your niche must be commercial

A few months ago I setup a luxury homeware and travel blog called Qosy. On the second day of running the site (Im not kidding) we received an offer to stay at a $2k/night retreat in Tasmania for a small fraction of the price if we agreed to write a review.

We turned it down due to feasibility

and the fact that a small fraction was

still way above what Id be willing to pay

for a hotel, but this taught me a valuable

lesson.

Choose a niche that helps people save

or make a lot of money.

One of my recent clients worked in the

stock market niche. He would earn up to

a $500 commission for every customer

that he referred to a broker. There are

10,000s of people searching for how to

choose a broker in his niche. Because

there is so much money changing hands

in his niche, its relatively easy for him to

make a lot of money.

Note: Where theres a lot of money, theres often a lot of competition. This is why you also need to be differentiated, passionate, and the authority.

This is in stark contrast to my

experience building online businesses

in the music industry. In music, most of

the money is owned by the major labels,

instrument manufacturers, and newly

funded startups. Unless theyre your

customers, generating income can be a

challenge.

Before I show you how to do

this, I want you to know that

having competitors is a good

thing. They will motivate you

to kick ass. Having competitors

also helps to confirm that your

niche is viable as you can see

whether what theyre doing is

working or not.

Analysing your competitors& opportunity

ONCE YOUVE GOT A NICHE IDEA, ITS TIME TO EVALUATE THE LEVEL OF COMPETITION THAT YOURE UP AGAINST.

How many people are trying to solve their problem online?

Lets imagine that your idea is to build a blog that

helps people learn about landscape gardening.

You want to inspire people to create beautiful

gardens, and give them insider tips on how to do

it. You plan to monetise it through advertising, and

recommending gardening tools that you receive an

affiliate commission from.

SO, DO PEOPLE SEARCH FOR THIS KIND OF THING ONLINE? TO WORK THIS OUT, WERE GOING TO USE GOOGLES KEYWORD PLANNER.

First off, Im going to enter a few

keywords that people might search for

in Google to end up on my blog. Ive

entered these into Get search volume

for a list of keywords, as Im interested

in knowing how many times people

search for things like best garden

spades each month.

In the screenshot, we can see that around 14,800

people search for gardening tools every month.

There are also 1,900 searches per month for best

lawn mowers.

This confirms that there are a good number of

people trying to make buying decisions online

around gardening equipment. The next step is to

see how stiff our competition is.

Note: You can ignore the columns about competition at this stage. This is to do with the number of advertisers bidding on this keyword in Google Adwords. Were just interested in knowing whether people are searching for answers to the problems that we plan to solve.

So, lets go to Google and see what

comes up when we search for best

lawn mowers. This will give us an idea

as to who were up against.

We can see that most of the

websites ranking for this term are

either forum discussions or small

niche websites. In other words,

were not up against Walmart, B&Q,

or Homebase, who might be quite

difficult to compete with.

How stiff is your competition?AS MENTIONED, HAVING COMPETITION CAN BE A GOOD THING. BUT TOO MUCH COMPETITION, OR TOO STRONG A COMPETITOR, AND YOU MIGHT BE BETTER OFF ZOOMING IN WITHIN YOUR NICHE.

Having clicked through some of the results I

dont get the impression that anyone owns this

niche. There doesnt seem to be any market leader,

just a collection of gardeners blogging about their

gardening.

While there are many great competitive

intelligence tools out there, I dont want to

overwhelm you with data. At this stage we

just want to know who the players in our

chosen niche are, and whether we think

we can beat them.

If youre happy with what youve

seen, then we can proceed to

consider how were going to

monetise this business.

We can also search for

landscapegardening blog to

see who else comes up:

How will you make money from your online business?

SO, HOW CAN YOU MAKE MONEY FROM [INSERT YOUR NICHE IDEA]?

There are an unlimited number of

ways that you can monetise an

online business. so get creative.

However, Ill run through four of

the most popular ways to get

some ideas flowing.

Affiliate marketing This is where you recommend / link to products with a unique

link. If someone buys a product after clicking

on your link, you receive a commission of

the sale. Virtually every major website has an

affiliate program that you can join for free.

Advertising There are a few ways you can monetise your website with ads. You could

contact companies privately and agree on

a monthly fee to place adverts on your site.

Alternatively, you could use a service like

Google Adsense, which pays you every time

someone clicks on your advert.

Selling your own products This is often the most lucrative way of making money

online, as you keep 100% of the profits from

the products that you sell. Creating products

can be time consuming, but

its usually worth the effort. Many bloggers

choose to create online courses and eBooks,

but you can get as creative as you like with

what products you create.

Drop shipping This is in between affiliate marketing and selling your own products. In

essence, customers buy products on your

website, and then you pass on those orders

to a supplier who fulfills and delivers them.

Often the commissions for drop shipping are

higher than affiliate marketing (typically 20

35% of the sale).

The right method of monetising your online

business will depend on your niche and the

type of business you create. The best way to

work out whats best for you is to just try a

few different approaches.

How much money can you make in your niche?

TRYING TO PROJECT REVENUE IS A BIT LIKE PREDICTING THE FUTURE. PROJECTIONS ARE EDUCATED GUESSES AT THE BEST OF TIMES. THAT SAID, I DO THINK ITS USEFUL TO GET AN IDEA OF THE BALL PARK FIGURES THAT YOURE DEALING WITH FOR TWO REASONS.

First of all, motivation. If you

can see that ranking #1 in Google

for a certain phrase will generate

enough revenue for you to buy

something youve always wanted,

youll work harder to make it

happen.

Secondly, to validate that the

opportunity is worth your effort.

So, how can you work out how

much money you might make in

your niche?

Well, it really depends on how

you decide to monetise your

website. Lets walk through a

quick example of how we might

monetise a blog post on lawn

mowers with affiliate marketing.

Lets say that we create a

blog post on Top 10 Best Lawn

Mowers. How much might we

earn from that blog post if it

ranks #1 in Google for Best Lawn

Mowers?

The #1 result in Google tends to

get around 56% of all traffic for

that keyword. So, ranking #1 for

best lawn mowers would likely

generate around 1,064 clicks per

month (1,900 * 0.56).

Lets say that the average lawn

mower costs $400, and 1% of your

readers buy one through your affiliate

link based on your recommendation.

Lets also say that your affiliate

commission is 5%, so you receive $20

for every lawn mower you refer.

Now, this is an extremely

conservative estimate. If

you ranked #1 for best lawn

mowers youd likely also

rank for phrases like lawn

mower reviews and top

garden lawn mowers, which

would also drive converting

traffic. You might also find

that 2.5% of your readers

purchase a lawn mower, and

that occasionally someone

spends $1,000 on a lawn

mower.

This is why projections

are a bit arbitrary. That said,

theyre good for making

relative comparisons

between different keywords

and niche ideas.

So, hopefully by now

you know what niche you

want to dominate, and how

youre going to turn it into

a business. The next step,

then, is getting started.

In this next section Im

going to walk through

everything you need to

do to setup your online

business without wasting

your money.

YOUR INCOME FOR RANKING #1 FOR BEST LAWN MOWERS, BASED ON THESE NUMBERS, WOULD BE $212.80 PER MONTH.

A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Lao Tzu

HOW TO SET UP YOUR FIRST ONLINE BUSINESS

chap

ter

This section is all about setting up your

website, and making it look and function like a

professional online business. As this is often the

stage that most people get stuck on, Im going

to go through each step in great detail.

Were going to go over each of the steps

below. Feel free to skip ahead if youve already

done some of them:

My challenge to you, if you havent already, is to take the first step towards running your own online business today.

Deciding on a decent name for your online business

Registering your domain name, web hosting, and installing WordPress

Designing your website & logo

Registering social media profiles

Creating an online store

Setting up advertising, affiliate, and merchant accounts

Setting up Google Analytics

Dont violate trademarks. A few years ago I setup an online business which

accidentally violated a competitors

trademark. While our name was unique,

it contained their (generic) name within

it. Unfortunately, we had to rebrand.

Luckily, this happened within 30 days of

launching the business so we didnt lose

too much progress, but I hate to imagine

what we would have had to do if the

dispute was raised several years down the

line.

Deciding on a decent name for your online businessI WONT DWELL ON THIS POINT, AS YOU SHOULDNT OVER THINK IT. I HAVE FRIENDS WHO SPENT MONTHS DELAYING BUILDING A BUSINESS BECAUSE THEY COULDNT DECIDE ON A NAME FOR IT. I CALL BULLSHIT.

When deciding on a name for your business, Id have three recommendations:

It should either be self-explanatory (e.g. AfricanSafariReviews.com) or, if youre in a

fast changing niche, something ambiguous

(like Venture Harbour). I chose the name

Venture Harbour for two reasons, first of all

we build and harbour a portfolio of online

ventures. Secondly, companies with words

like SEO, content marketing, or social media

in their name seem to change their names

like the wind due to the fast changing

nature of the industry. I wanted to avoid

that.

Make it memorable and brandable.

Registering your domain, web hosting, and

WordPress

IN ORDER TO GET YOUR WEBSITE UP AND RUNNING, YOU NEED THREE THINGS:

A domain name This is the address that

people will type into their

browser to access your

website. For example, www.

ventureharbour.com is our

domain name.

Web hosting This is the web space where you upload your

websites files to. When

someone types in your

domain name it serves up

web pages from your web

host. Think of it like a hard

disk drive on the Internet.

A content management system (CMS) Instead of having to code every page on your

website in HTML, a CMS

enables you to add pages

and make design changes

without having to write any

code. WordPress is a free

CMS, and also happens to

be one of the best.

YOU CAN GET ALL THREE OF THESE UP AND RUNNING IN A MATTER OF MINUTES USING A WEB HOSTING COMPANY CALLED BLUEHOST.

Choosing a good web hosting company

is extremely important. It determines

the security, speed, uptime, and overall

performance of your website. Fortunately,

weve done much of the hard work for you.

Bluehost are my favourite affordable web

hosting company. We use them for virtually

all of our websites, and have never had any

downtime or problems.

They offer new customers a free domain

name, as well as the ability to install

WordPress (well talk about this later) in one

click. In other words, you can have everything

you need to set your online business up in

under 5 minutes for less than $5 per month.

So, how do you get started?

First of all, you need to go to the Bluehost website,

click get started now and create your account. Youll be

able to claim your free domain name on the following

pages.

On the create your account page youll need to decide

which hosting package you want. For most people,

the most affordable option is absolutely fine. The more

expensive services are designed for websites that already

receive a large amount of traffic. You can always upgrade

later when your website starts to generate a lot of visitors.

You can also untick all of the bells

and whistles. Once youve created your

account and have registered your free

domain name you should be able to log in

to your control panel shown below. From

here, you want to look for the button that

says Install WordPress, which Ive circled

in red.

From here it should be nice and intuitive.

Just follow the instructions until you reach this

page where you can click install.

After the installation has completed, you

can then visit www.yourwebsite.com/wp-

admin/ (just add /wp-admin/) to the end of

your domain name. Usually this works instantly,

but sometimes it can take a few hours for

everything to propagate.

Youll then need to login to your website

using the credentials that you created in

the installation process, and thats it! Youve

officially installed WordPress, which means that

you have yourself a working website!

Designing your website& logo

NOW THAT YOUVE GOT WORDPRESS INSTALLED, YOU SHOULD HAVE A PRETTY GENERIC LOOKING SITE LIKE THIS:

To change the design of your

website you will need to choose a

new theme. There are thousands

of beautiful themes, some free and

some paid.

Its absolutely fine to use a free

WordPress theme, but they tend

not be coded as well as premium

themes. I usually find that its worth

paying $40-50 for a good mobile

responsive WordPress theme, but its

really up to you.

Theres a great list of themes to

choose from here. You can also

browse ThemeForest, which has

a huge range of great themes to

choose from.

Once youve chosen a theme you like and have

downloaded it, go back to your WordPress dashboard

and find the tab called appearance. Under this tab youll

see themes, which will bring you to a page like this:

Click add new and upload the theme that you

downloaded. Once this has finished, you just need

to click activate. Depending on your theme, youll

then probably need to go to theme options and

begin customising your theme with your desired

colours and styles etc.

33/48 C h a p t e r 2

H O W TO S E T U P YO U R F I R S T O N L I N E B U S I N E S S

AS A DESIGNER MYSELF, IVE ALWAYS JUST WHIPPED UP LOGOS IN PHOTOSHOP MYSELF. HOWEVER, THERE ARE A FEW GOOD OPTIONS FOR NON-DESIGNERS:

Designing your business logo

99Designs For about $300 you get 30 different designers to all create a

logo idea for you. You then choose your

favourite design, and the winner receives

the majority of the $300 as a prize.

PeoplePerHour.com A marketplace where many designers offer

gigs to design a logo for your business.

Prices range from $10 to $250.

Freelance.com - Freelance is very similar to PeoplePerHour, but slightly

more professional. The difference here is

that you can post a job saying that you

need a logo, and then designers can pitch

you with their portfolio and provide you

with a quote on how much it will cost.

Fiverr If you just need something quick and simple you can use Fiverr.com.

This is essentially a super cheap version of

PeoplePerHour, where you can get a logo

designed for $5. It goes without saying

that at this price youre not likely to get

anything bespoke.

IF YOU HAVENT ALREADY, NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO REGISTER YOUR PROFILES ON POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. AT THIS STAGE, ID JUST RECOMMEND REGISTERING THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNTS:

Registering social media profiles

A Facebook Page

A Twitter Account

A LinkedIn Company Page

A Google+ Company Profile

A Company Youtube Profile

A Pinterest Profile

If you like, you can upload

your company description, logo,

and begin adding content, but

Id save this for later. At this

stage, we just want to claim

ownership of the accounts.

IF YOU PLAN TO MONETISE YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WITH ADVERTISING, AFFILIATE MARKETING, OR SOME OTHER METHOD THAT DOESNT INVOLVE DIRECTLY SELLING PRODUCTS, FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS SECTION.

Creating an online store

If, however, youre planning on

selling your own products or drop

shipping, youll need to setup a

merchant account with PayPal

and add the functionality to sell

products on your WordPress

website.

To add this functionality, were

going to need to install a plugin

called WooCommerce.

WooCommerce is completely free

and easy to set up. To install it, go

to your WordPress dashboard, and

under plugins click add new.

Search for WooCommerce

and click install.

Once installed, you

need to activate

WooCommerce.

Then, you can begin adding product

pages by clicking on the sidebar

tab called products. The layout is

fairly intuitive, so I wont go into too

much detail about how to setup

products.

If you do get stuck, theres a great

guide on setting up WooCommerce

here.

Setting up your Paypal Merchant account

To set this up, go to PayPal.com and follow the

instructions to setup a business account. PayPals offerings

vary from country to country, but in most countries they

offer a free account where they receive a small percentage

of every inbound transaction. If possible, that is probably

the best one to go for.

REGARDLESS OF HOW YOU MONETISE YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS, YOU WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY NEED A PAYPAL ACCOUNT TO GET PAID.

THE BEST ADVERTISING OR AFFILIATE NETWORK TO JOIN WILL DEPEND ON YOUR NICHE AND THE TYPE OF ONLINE BUSINESS YOU RUN. ILL RUN THROUGH A FEW OF THE MOST POPULAR AD NETWORKS AND AFFILIATE PROGRAMS, BUT ID RECOMMEND DOING A BIT OF RESEARCH ON THIS.

Google Adsense (ad network) This is probably the easiest ad network to get setup on,

and it pays relatively well. You just create an account,

decide on the size of advert you want, and then paste

the code into your websites theme. How much you earn

from Adsense depends, but typically you can expect

$0.50 every time your ad is clicked.

You can view what Adsense looks like here on

WhatIsMyComfortZone.com. Those ads currently

generate $0.38 per click and are clicked by 1.5% of

visitors.

Joining your first advertising/ affiliate network

Amazon Associates (affiliate network) A few years ago I wrote a blog post on the

best earplugs for musicians to use. I was

already linking to some products from

Amazon, so I decided to set these to

affiliate links using Amazons associates

program. I thought nothing of it for a

year or so.

Affiliate Network Aggregators If you want to refer customers to high street brands or

specific companies, like American Express or JC Penney,

you will likely need to use an affiliate network aggregator.

There are a ton of these, including Commission

Junction, Clickbank, ShareaSale, and LinkShare. Using

these services you can join the affiliate programs of many

brands and online stores. Every brand has a different

commission structure some offer as much as 50% of the

sale, whereas others offer as little as 1%.

Then I started to receive monthly payments

of $40, then $80, then $200! What was really

odd was that when I logged into my Amazon

account I realised I was earning commissions

from people buying everything from cat litter

trays to bulk quantities of Haribo turtle sweets.

Im pretty sure Ive never written about cat

litter trays or turtle sweets. So, what was going

on?

As it happens, Amazon pay you up to 8.5%

commissions of anything people buy from

Amazon within 24 hours of clicking on your

affiliate link.

The real benefit of using Amazon Associates

is that there are very few things you cant buy

from Amazon. Whatever your niche may be,

there are likely to be products that you can

recommend on Amazon. Amazon also have

excellent conversion rates, which makes it

easier for you to earn commissions.

Setting up Google Analytics

GOOGLE ANALYTICS IS HOW WE MONITOR OUR WEBSITES PERFORMANCE, AND WHAT OUR VISITORS ARE DOING ON OUR WEBSITE. WE CAN EVEN SEEN WHAT PEOPLE DO ON SPECIFIC PAGES OF OUR SITE.

Heres what GA looks like when

we drill down to view the stats

on our article 20 Best Sites for

Royalty Free Stock Images &

Creative Commons Photos.

In one glance, we can see that the traffic to this post is

generally increasing. We can see that the majority of traffic

is coming from search engines (the orange line), and that on

average people spend 2.49 minutes reading the article.

In other words, Google Analytics

gives us a lot of information on who

our audience is. It also tells us what

were doing thats working, and

what isnt.

IF WE DRILLED DOWN EVEN FURTHER WE COULD FIND OUT WHERE THOSE VISITORS COME FROM (BY COUNTRY OR CITY), AS WELL AS WHAT THEIR BROWSER OR OPERATING SYSTEM IS.

As Google Analytics is completely

free to install, its best to install it

and gather data even if you dont

think youll use it much to begin

with.

To get setup, visit analytics.

google.com, sign up for an account,

and add a website. Youll receive a

snippet of code that youll need to

copy and paste into your websites

header. Once this is added, GA will

begin gathering data for you!

When it comes to selling, you can eitherwork hard or you can

work smart. WhenI first launched Venture

Harbour, I chosethe former.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR FIRST ONLINE SALE

chap

ter

The business grew

month-on-month until

ten months later, I

crashed. Since then,

Ive grown the business

the smart way, using

systems.

I want to be clear in

saying that working

smart isnt inherently

better than working

hard. I believe they

both have their place.

The reality is that youll

probably need to work

hard and hustle to

attract your first few

customers.

Over the long run,

though, Ive learned

that hard work is

overrated and rarely

sustainable. Working

smart, on the other

hand, is. So, what are

we talking about when

we talk about working

smart?

In short, were talking

about automation,

building systems,

and making yourself

obsolete to the running

of your business.

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Well touch on each of these in a moment,

but first why systems?

If you talked to me about systems two years

ago my eyes would have glazed over. Today,

when I hear the word systems they light up.

Perhaps I need to get out more

The band U2 have a great song called With

or without you, which Im pretty certain is

all about building systems for your online

business. See, a system will run itself with or

without you, You could be sitting on a beach in

the Bahamas sipping Mai Tais, and your system

would still be plugging away.

Because of this, it can scale.

The three systems

A system for getting attention

A system for capturing

data

A system for selling products

A FEW DAYS AGO I CAME ACROSS A GREAT CONCEPT BY RAMIT SETHI. HE EXPLAINS THAT IN ORDER TO SCALE YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS YOU NEED THREE SYSTEMS:

MY FIRST SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS WAS MUSICLAWCONTRACTS.COM. I BUILT IT AS A FRIEND OF MINE ASKED IF I COULD HELP HIM SELL THE CONTRACT TEMPLATES HE WAS CREATING FOR HIS CLIENTS. AT THE TIME, I WAS RUNNING THE MUSICIANS GUIDE, AND WAS HAPPY TO INTRODUCE HIS CONTRACTS TO OUR READERS.

I uploaded the contracts he sent

over and left it. At first, nothing

happened, but after six months or so

we began to see a few sales come in.

Over the past three years this

website has consistently generated

around $1,000 per month. The income

is completely passive, 100% profit, and

requires no ongoing work whatsoever.

Now, you might be thinking that

$1,000 per month is not really

a life transforming amount of

income to be generating.

Maybe not, but the point is that

because it runs like clockwork, it

doesnt require an exchange of

time. Imagine what happens when

you own 10 or 100 of these kinds

of businesses?

Its just like building a real

estate empire. Sure, the first

property you buy might net

you an extra $300 per month.

So what? But most real estate

entrepreneurs go on to own 20, 50,

100, or 500 properties. The results

then compound.

All of the great books on personal

finance like Rich Dad Poor Dad, The

Richest Man in Babylon, and Secrets of

the Millionaire Mindset all emphasise

one thing: passive income.

My first (accidentally) successful online business

Think of this as any form of marketing that

generates a positive ROI (return on investment) and

doesnt require an ongoing commitment of your

time.

This can be different for every online business.

Ill share a few of the ways Im doing this with a

handful of projects that I work on:

A system for getting attention

PASSIVE INCOME REQUIRES SYSTEMS. SO HOW DO YOU BUILD SYSTEMS INTO YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS TO GENERATE SALES WHILE YOU SLEEP? LETS GO THROUGH THE THREE SYSTEMS MENTIONED BY RAMIT EARLIER:

Venture Harbour - We predominantly focus on

content marketing to attract

traffic. We regularly produce

content like this article which

brings traffic to our site via

search engines and social

media.

A proportion of those

people then contact us to

consult to them. While it takes

a long time to produce the

content, once its live, it helps

to drive traffic for a long time.

What Is My Comfort Zone This site is so unusual that it

regularly gets coverage on

sites like The Next Web and

Smart Planet (which drives

users).

Weve also worked out

that for every person who

measures their comfort zone,

they generate (on average)

1.1 new visitors through social

sharing. This system means

that we have a constant

stream of new users.

FanDistro This is a client of ours who uses an

ongoing Facebook advertising

campaign that consistently

drives a hundreds of new

users to their website at a

cost effective ROI.

As you can see, theres no right or

wrong way of doing this, and each

approach has its pros and cons. The

point is that we could do nothing for

a month and, thanks to the traffic

generating systems, all three of

these projects would continue to

generate new visitors.

Experiment with different traffic

sources to see which systems work

for you. To get you started, here are

some traffic sources that you can

experiment with:

WE OCCASIONALLY TWEAK THIS CAMPAIGN, BUT EVEN IF WE WERE TO LEAVE IT RUNNING FOR MONTHS, ITD STILL WORK JUST FINE.

Run a Google Adwords ad campaign

Run a Facebook Ad campaign

Run a contest on social media

Create an epic blog post that will attract potential leads

Build a YouTube channel and add regular video content

A system for capturing data

WHAT GOOD IS TRAFFIC IF YOU DO NOTHING WITH IT? THE NEXT PHASE IS TO BUILD A SYSTEM THAT CAPTURES USER DATA. THE MOST VALUABLE PIECE OF DATA IS THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS.

At a very basic level, people will only

exchange their personal data with

you if they get something in return.

This may just be your wisdom in the

form of a regular newsletter. It might

be something more tangible, like an

eBook or, if youre in a B2B (business to

business) niche, a white paper.

NEWSLETTERNEWSLETTER

Remember, we want this to be a set

and forget system that drives a regular

stream of new leads for you. A good

place to start would be to add a signup

form on your website that encourages

readers to sign up to your newsletter.

BELOW IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF HOW UNBOUNCE DO THIS ON THEIR BLOG.

Alternatively, you could get creative by

giving your readers something to do or sign

up for.

BrowserStack do a good job of this. They

allow anyone to test their website across

multiple browsers in return for some basic

personal data. This allows them to build an

enormous database of web developers and

designers to market their premium services to.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE SYSTEMS FOR CAPTURING TRAFFIC AND COLLECTING LEADS WORKING LIKE CLOCKWORK, ITS TIME TO START MONETISING THOSE LEADS. TO DRIVE SALES, WE NEED THREE THINGS:

A system for driving sales

A product (it doesnt

necessarily need to

be your own product

if youre an affiliate).

A pitch to sell that product.

A platform to communicate that

pitch to your leads.

However, I want to raise the importance of

creating evergreen products. By evergreen

we simply mean a product that wont go out

of date for a long time.

Too many times Ive heard from friends

who wrote an eBook or filmed an online

course that they were hoping to set and

forget. Then, they realised that aspects of

their book or course became outdated.

Predictably, they ended up spending years

chasing their tails.

I cant stress how important it is to be able

to leave your product alone for a long period

of time. Everything from your payment

system (WooCommerce) to your

follow up emails should be 100%

automated.

If theyre not, youre going to be

that person that hasnt had a holiday

in five years and checks their phone

every ten minutes while out at dinner.

Dont be that person.

The Product

WEVE ALREADY DISCUSSED THE PROS AND CONS OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF PRODUCTS AND MONETISATION METHODS, SO I WONT GO INTO THAT HERE.

A good place to start would be to heed

Otto Von Bismarks advice:

There are thousands of great case studies,

training courses, and business owners willing

to share their perspectives on what does

and doesnt work. In my opinion, the

best way to learn how to improve

your pitch is to simply test it.

Using a tool like VWO (Visual

Website Optimizer) you can test how

different landing pages affect your

conversion rate. For inspiration, you

can see the results of thousands of

tests and case studies from existing

VWO customers.

The Pitch

HOW YOU PITCH YOUR PRODUCT IS MORE OF AN ART THAN A SCIENCE. IT CAN TAKE YEARS TO LEARN AND DECADES TO MASTER.

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The

wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

For years, MusicLawContracts.com

had a crappy self-coded integration with

PayPal. This was causing about one third

of customers to end up not receiving

the product they bought. We had angry

customers contact us daily, and we

spent more time doing customer service

than we did trying to grow the business.

Then, one day I decided enough was

enough. I implemented WooCommerce.

We havent been emailed by a

customer in a long time. The platform

runs so smoothly that we dont even

have to think about it.

With some of our clients we use

an amazing piece of software called

Infusionsoft. Without going into too

much detail (heres a more in-depth

review of Infusionsoft), Infusionsoft is

a really smart piece of software that

allows you to set up follow up emails

and campaigns based on specific

customer behaviour.

For example, if its one of your

customers birthdays, you can use

Infusionsoft to send them a 20%

discount. If a lead has looked at a

product on your website, you can send

them an email asking if they needed

any help.

The Platform

HOW YOU DELIVER YOUR PRODUCT TO YOUR CUSTOMERS CAN MAKE OR BREAK HOW SMOOTHLY YOUR BUSINESS RUNS.

Sales has some bad connotations,

but ultimately it boils down to the

ability to effectively and honestly

communicate with people. Sales

is the true test of personal and

interpersonal skills.

Were not talking about snake

oil car salesmen here. Were

talking about the people we feel

warm around, who help solve our

problems.

Last year, I spent a morning with John

Perrin who founded Tactical Sales Training.

At first, I was reluctant to go on the course,

as I never considered myself a sales person.

Id tell myself youre a marketer and an

entrepreneur, not a salesman. Bullshit. Were

all sales people whether we like it or not.

The afternoon after Johns course, I closed

a potential client over the phone in half an

hour. This was unheard of usually clients

took weeks, if not months to close. Maybe it

was a fluke?

The months following the training,

clients began to sign up more and more

effortlessly. I also began to notice that I was

communicating better with my girlfriend,

friends, and virtually everyone I came into

contact with. I realised that what Id learned

about sales wasnt just relevant to making

sales.

I want to share three key lessons that

I learned from John with you. If youre in

South England, I highly recommend going

along to one of their courses, but for

those who arent here are some valuable

takeaways.

The #1 skill every entrepreneur should learnEVERY HUMAN ON THIS PLANET SHOULD LEARN SALES. HERES WHY EVERYTHING IS SALES.

1) Be brutally honest According to John, the number one quality of a top sales person is

honesty. As a marketing consultancy, were often asked

questions like why should we pick you over [insert

competing agency]?

Id usually respond with some mediocre response

about how were more specialised in a certain area, or

how we have a proven track record with various clients.

Since Johns training, ive began to simply respond

to this question by acknowledging that most of our

competitors are actually really good.

Similarly, I often advise our clients to just go for

the cheapest options in our proposals, if thats all

they need. This builds trust, which is fundamental for

building your customer base.

When growing your online business this is extremely

important, because you dont necessary have the

benefit of speaking to your customers face to face.

Honesty has to shine through every aspect of your

business, from your website copy to your email

responses.

2) Ask better questions If you ask a crap question, youll get a crap answer.

Learning to ask good questions is one

of the most important things you can

do to boost your sales.

We had a potential client last year

who requested three meetings, over ten

phone calls, and five revised proposals

from us. They never became a client.

That works out at around five days of

un-billable work down the drain. It was

entirely my fault for not asking the right

questions.

After Johns training I began asking

potential clients two great questions:

When do you expect to kick off with

this project?

Is their any reason whatsoever that this

might not go ahead on that day?

If the potential client picked a date

four months down the line, Id then ask

whats stopping us from kicking off next

month?

The answer to this question can be

extremely revealing as to their situation.

But its the second question that really

gets to the heart of whether or not

theyre committed or not.

3) Measure what matters, and do what needs to be done In the course, John asked me how many potential clients Id called that month.

Embarrassingly, the answer was zero. I was

waiting for potential clients to call me.

I was scared of calling up potential clients

and getting turned down.

Sales is, to a large extent, a numbers game.

At first, you might need to call or email 50

potential clients to get one sale. But, if youre

measuring what works and what doesnt,

soon youll be able to contact 30, and then 20,

potential clients to get a sale.

The biggest lesson that I learned from John

was ironically something Ive been preaching

for years with my talks on comfort zones.

Get out of your comfort zone and just get on

with whatever needs to be done to grow your

business.

Why? Because feedback will enable

you to quickly iterate your product or

offering to be more in line with what

your customers want.

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries talks

about the iteration cycle.

In essence, Eric advises that the

less time it takes you to go from

coming up with an idea to improve

your business to getting feedback,

the faster you can improve.

Feedback is more important than making the saleWHEN YOU FIRST LAUNCH YOUR BUSINESS, YOUR AIM SHOULD BE TO COLLECT AS MUCH INFORMATION FROM YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS AS POSSIBLE. THIS SHOULD BE PRIORITISED OVER MAKING THE SALE.

Building your audience

A FEW MONTHS AGO I WROTE AN ENORMOUS POST ON THE ULTIMATE STARTUP MARKETING STRATEGY, WHICH OUTLINES MOST OF THE POPULAR METHODS FOR INCREASING YOUR ONLINE SALES.

To avoid repeating the content

in that guide, Im not going to talk about tactics here. If you

want to learn how SEO, video

marketing, or conversion rate

optimisation can be used to

grow your online business, I

recommend downloading the guide

from Foundr Magazine.

Ive done my best to cover

virtually every aspect I can

think of to ensure that your

online business has a great

foundations. That said, no two

online businesses are the same,

and so you will undoubtedly

have many unique challenges

and obstacles to overcome.

In hindsight, those obstacles

are a great thing. They force you

to learn and grow, which is all

part of the adventure of building

a business.

at least a handful of headaches

and tough days.

Finally, remember what Lao-

tzu said. A journey of a thousand

miles begins with a small step.

Take that next small step

now.

THATS ME DONE YOUR MOVE

STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS IS NOT EASY, BUT IT CAN BE EXTREMELY LIBERATING AND REWARDING.

So, congratulations on making

it to the end of this guide! I hope that learning from my

mistakes and wins will save you

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