Online Business Tips

The key to sucess in an online business is to make money when you're sleeping. For the record, I have a lot of experience waking up in the morning to find my mailbox full of payments. But I don't do it anymore. Which means I can give you an objective point of view, without the cool-aid.

Why when you're sleeping? Because money which you make when you're awake is a job. Money which you make when you're sleeping gives you a business. All right, lets not quibble over whether your online juggernaut is a job or a business. I just stressed the point because a lot of freelance hacks make money off the ether by providing online services, or help to other online businesses. You can't call that a business. So let's kick these losers out of the discussion. Just in case you're a freelance hack, and you feel bad about being shown the door, cheer up - I'm a hack myself.

That leaves the online entrepreuner, who has a website, and collects money in return for something - Web content, advice, digital downloads like e-books or software, or just an e-commerce shop which actually sells physical goods. That's online business. And that's what we're going to talk about.

What are the essential ingredients for this cocktail? Authenticity, expertise, trust, ability to accept all types of payments online, lots of traffic, networking, generate online buzz. How do we do all this? Continue reading....

First thing you need to do is decide on a business. I don't say its necessary for you to be an expert on the subject, but it would have been helpful. Anyway, here's a simple suggestion. Find the biggest site which is doing the same thing you want to do. Read everything on every page of the site. Visit all the links which lead out of that site. Now repeat the process for four to five more similar sites. Once you have an idea of what things you need on the site, get busy creating the site. Take your time. The internet's going nowhere. A couple of suggestions which apply to all sites:

• Paypal alone is not enough. You need to be able to accept credit cards.
• You need a membership area, regardless of whether you're only an affiliate marketeer or e-book seller.
• Your web pages need to load wicked fast. Test your hosting to see if its up to speed. If not, find another webhost. Do not host with free web hosting providers.

If these three things are not possible for you, stop reading right now, close this window, shut down your computer, go out, get drunk, have a good night's sleep and in the morning, go back to your old boss and beg him to give you back your job.

Why am I being so harsh? Because this bring us to the next step - Authencity and trust. The internet is full of fly-by-night operators and hustlers ( not to mention Nigerian bankers ). The only way you can convince a visitor to whip out the plastic is being brutally and absolutely honest. Not to mention the appearance of being an expert, if not actually being an expert. Bald guy looking for a hair growth tonic? Tell him no one on earth can guarantee it, and anyone who offers a guarantee is a hustler. With that one statement, you build trust. But you still need to sell. So you offer detailed information about how you can help. That builds autheticity. If Baldy likes it, he'll whip out the plastic. Done deal.

Which brings us to an important point. How do you go about getting a lot of Baldy's to visit your site, so you can hit them with the hair growth tonic from Timbuktu? Well, that's what we call traffic acquisition. If it's your own product, meaning you stock it and ship it, then you can start an affiliate program. If you have an online store with lots of products from lots of companies, and you don't do the shipping, then you need to work hard for the traffic. Search engine optimisation, link exchanges, press releases, hitting forums and blogs with ads or signatures. There's lots of ways to get traffic. But they all take time. If it's worth it and you're confident about your products, you might consider buying traffic with PPC search engines, like Google's Adwords or Overture.

My interpretation of the picture above is that the guy is trying to figure out just who on the internet gave him all that money. You see, knowing who your customers are, how they found your site and what they're interested in can mean the difference between success and failure. So you also need to analyze your exisiting traffic and membership, and focus on what works. Spend more time doing whatever is bringing in the most amount of sales. One related issue - Try to get people to sign in for a year's subscription of whatever you're selling. It's not a question of how many sales you have this mont, but how many you're going to ave next month, and the month after that. You can't depend on a crap shoot. That's not success. That's survival. To succeed, you need to build on existing customers, and membership needs to increase exponentially.

Once you're at a stage where people keep visiting your site even when you're asleep, and the site automatically charges regular customers once a month, you'll start hearing ka-ching in your sleep. No dream that. Its the online cash register which keeps working even when you're sleeping.

If you're dissapointed at not finding 101 ways to get rich quick, well that's because there ain't any. Money comes two ways - You can con people and get rich quick. Or you can work hard, be it online or offline, build relationships, find trusted suppliers and regular customers and just keep the engine humming quietly.

One more thing - The reason I stopped my ka-ching machine and got off the bus was because I was getting rich, but losing my life. Now I get paid for what I do, and I sleep peacefully without ka-ching ringing in my ears. So you wnat to get rich online, be prepared to give up everything else and work on it 24/7.