I think the biggest hurdle I’ve heard about starting your own internet business is how to start. If I were to pick one specific subset of that problem, I would say that it is the problem of creating a product. Well, I’ve eliminated that. This isn’t exactly a new strategy, but it works. Here’s the exact way to get started with your business online in 6 steps. These 6 steps should take you less than 3 hours, but that only depends on your determination and ability to avoid distractions.
Before I get started, I want to make this very clear. This is one way, the quickest way, to launch a business. It is not the most profitable way, but if you follow these steps, you will come out with a targeted list, a few hundred dollars, and the knowledge on how to expand your business and profits. Without further ado, here is the sequence.
- Sign up for a Clickbank.com and buy an account at Aweber.com.
Before you start to tune me out and assume that I’m going to teach you the latest and greatest affiliate marketing technique, I’l just say this: the first product you sell will be someone else’s. The second, third, and hopefully fourth product you sell will be yours. If I told you to originally sell your own product, you’d have to spend days or even weeks researching and producing it. That’s not what we want.I use Aweber, and that’s what I recommend. Without getting into a debate as to which autoresponder is best, sign up for one. That’s the important one. You NEED one and won’t build a profitable business without it.
I used Clickbank as an example. You can also use CJ.com, Paydotcom.com, Neverblueads.com, Shareasale.com, etc. Any affiliate network will do. I actually recommend you sign up for all of them to compare offers and products, and eventually you will sign up for most if not all of them, but for now just one will do. I’ll use Clickbank throughout the rest of this example.
- Pick a niche and find 3 products in that niche.
Any niche will do, really. I recommend a niche you’re at least interested in. We’re building a business that will grow and be around for awhile, so if you are not at least interested in the niche, it’ll get to be very hard to work the day-to-day aspects of it. There are a few niches that will always make more money than others: anything having to do with making money (stocks, FOREX, make money online, etc.), weight loss, fitness, nutrition, and markets similar to those. I caution you not to get into these markets if they don’t interest you… yet. They are good to get into later when you’re a little more experienced, but not right now. Plus, they’re pretty competitive markets and require a good amount of work and internet marketing prowess to make it work.
Pick 3 relatively similiar products on Clickbank. Go to CBTrends to see a historical chart of the product’s gravity and other statistics to determine its growth. Find one that has gaining popularity, gravity, and earned per sale, meaning the product is popular and people aren’t returning it. These 3 products should have been around for a while.
Ideally you will buy these products, however, right now, we’re looking to start quick. You can read the products while you’re making sales and adjust accordingly.
- Use pages.google.com, Page Breeze, or www.weebly.com to build a mini-site.
Most hosting companies offer free site builders as well, so you can use them to create your site, but those three will also do. You MUST host your own site. Do not use something like wordpress.com or blogger.com to host the site you are building. You need to create your own domain and your own brand. End of story. Without your own domain, you will not be able to build up your own brand and products, etc. Just trust me: you need your own domain.To build your site, take about 30 minutes to an hour and do research on the three products you found. Type up honest, unbiased reviews and recommend the product you think is most valuable. It doesn’t have to have personal experiences in the review. It can be subjective like a business article would be. Be sure you recommend one over the other and do not include negative things about the other products. For instance say something like "the blue book has 5 ways to make money online and a better bonus, whereas the red book only has 3 and no bonus, that’s why I recommend the blue book. The red book does work very well, however, the blue book is more thorough". Notice: no negativity, just emphasize the positives.
Some may call this unetical: you’re endorsing products you haven’t tried. That’s up to you to figure out. I actually only endorse products I use and find useful. If you have a little more time, you want to evaluate the product fully. Your endorsement will reflect it.
When you write the endorsement, make sure you stress the benefits to the reader, not the features. Example of benefits: only spend 15 minutes a day while the FOREX software makes you millions. Example of feature: FOREX software connects to the broker to automatically make trades. See the difference? Make sure you stress these BIG TIME. That’s what will sell your product.
- Write 4 Follow-up emails, with the 4th one including your affiliate link to your product through a link cloaking tool.
This is the most important part of this, and the easiest to screw up. Do NOT try to sell the reader on the first email. Span the emails with 2-3 days in between messages, unless you call it a "mini-course" or something of that nature and they expect emails every day.You can find the content all over the internet for the four emails that you write. Make it very good and useful content, or you will not convince your reader to buy anything. In addition, make sure your subject line is something you would open. Remember: curiosity = opened email.
- Make your Autoresponder
Put those 4 emails in your autoresponder. Then create a popover script that entices the person to sign up for your course or information. Place that code on your site and sign up for your own autoresponder to make sure it works.
- Send traffic
This is the fun part. The best 2 quick ways I can recommend you send traffic your way is through article marketing and forum marketing.a) Article marketing: simple enough - write 5 articles and publish them to ezinearticles.com.
b) Forum marketing: find a forum related to your niche and create a signature that links back to your page. Start answering and asking questions in the forum. DO NOT SELL TO THE PEOPLE ON THE FORUM. Provide value. That’s the most important aspect.
That’s it! Your goal is to start collecting email address and "building a list". Check. And make a few bucks in the process. Check.
Where to go from here: That’s where it gets fun. Create your own product, create a blog for more traffic generation, increase your article marketing, open your site to more marketing methods, cross-sell other related niche’s products to your list, JV and partner with other merchants, and the list goes on and one.
But you’ve started building your list, and that makes it so you will be able to create a relationship with your list (invaluable), and gives you leverage with other marketers so you can JV and create more partnerships.
So there you go. 3 hours, by my estimation, mostly taken up by article creation. About $35 for signing up for Aweber, and paying for hosting. Seriously, if you can’t find $35 to start your own business, you shouldn’t be looking to start your own business.
To learn how to build your own multi-six figure home business, subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
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- In A Fast Paced Internet World, the Fastest Wins. Sometimes.
- Quite Possibly the Best Thing to Happen to You…
- 5 Surprising Traffic Secrets
Monday, 19 May 2008 Filed under: List Building, Marketing, Starting Up, Tutorials by Bryan
Brian,
This is the best short tutorial for newbie internet businessmen. Bravo.
But…! (always but :)) You must write more about traffic and ways how to get it because this issue is the most problematic for most of internet marketers.
Best regards,
Ukion from DetectorPro
Ukions last blog post..How to install Mozilla Thunderbird on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04
I didn’t cover any traffic methods other than articles and forums here because getting traffic is actually a pretty complex process.
Massive traffic is actually pretty easy to obtain, but you have to do it right and scale it. I’m working on coming up with a traffic guide that will show you how to go from 0 to 1,000,000 visitors a month (in a clear and concise manner) in about 6 months. And here’s the kicker: unlike other traffic manuals, you’ll be profitable the entire time!
Unfortunately I’m a little busy breaking into another niche in these coming weeks, so it may take me a few weeks to get it out, but if you subscribe to my feed, I promise it’ll be out before July 4th.
I’ve read a few articles on your blog now and I must say I am enjoying the content. One thing I do have to tell you though is I find that to some degree they assume the reader is familiar with a fair bit of jargon. I don’t know if that makes sense, maybe another way of putting it is that they are beginner articles written for an intermediate crowd.
Jonathans last blog post..How To Fund Your Child’s Retirement For Only Thirty Dollars A Month
Excellent article Bryan! Well done
But I want to ask you though, is it ethical to use articles or article parts as your own.
Because I understood that the articles that will be submitted through email will be taken from other sites or articles.
Great article end of story. You provide very quality content.
@ Jonathon - Mainly I tried to use the book that I give away as an introduction to the lingo (if you sign up via email you’ll receive it for free, plus some other good stuff :)). I’ll try to make the language a little less assuming and more informative. Sometimes its hard to put myself in my own shoes just a few years ago. It’s one of my weaknesses.
@ Nik - I’m not sure what you mean about articles or article parts as your own. If you’re talking about stealing someone else’s articles, then absolutely not. It’s actually illegal. However, and this is big… there is nothing saying you can’t take someone else’s article and rewrite it in your own words. How many original articles do you think are out there? Most are just rewrites.
@ All 3 of you - thanks for the compliments. It’s my version of trying to give back to a community that has treated me well. Stay tuned. I have many things planned that you’ve probably never seen before.