Design My Own Website

Posts Tagged ‘online business’

Many people look to learn how to design their own website because they want to start making money online.  internet marketing and designing websites for the most part go hand in hand.

There are a few stats floating out there when it comes to succeeding in business.  Many people will say 9 out of 10 businesses fail.  These are brick and mortar type businesses from people who make the sacrifice and take the plunge.

9 out of 10 businesses fail

I would probably add that it is something like 99 out of 100 internet markteting businesses fail.  Why?  Because it is much easier to get into internet marketing so more people will try it!

What is missing is that mindset: that entreprenurial mindset.

Here are today’s top five internet marketing mindset tips for success:

1. It is YOUR business.  Treat it as such.

This is your baby.  It’s not a 9 to 5 job for someone else.  This means you will have to put in a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of commitment to this.  Working at another company is like babysitting someone else’s baby.  This is your baby.  Don’t forget that.

2. Information overload!

Believe it or not there are MANY ways to make money with internet marketing and online businesses.  And even if you focus on one way, there are many methods to achieve that one way.  Because of this, as you are studying, it is very very easy to get distracted on the “next best thing”.  Experienced markters will tell you to “find that one thing that works and stick to it”.  Well, unfortunately it’s hard to know what is the one thing that works and it seems every day there is a new thing, a new e-book, a new course that pops up telling you how to do something.

Find something that makes sense to you, that you can do, and it is likely to work as there are many ways to succeed in internet marketing.  And if it doesn’t, then you can tweak it some more.

3. Beware the hype

As you start studying and educating yourself with making money online, you’ll find there are a lot of products out there.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is.  And beware of “invisible” sales pitches.  This means they leave out specifics on how to accomplish making money and simply say “just a few clicks” or “just copy and paste”.  And if they promise immediate five figure income, beware!

4. Patience, commitment

Just compare your online business to a brick and mortar store.  A regular business will take thousands of dollars in startup costs.  They may take three to five years to break even or make money.  The hype in internet marketing may make you impatient to be making money now since you hear so many stories about it.

Patience, Persistence, and Commitment Lead To Success

So just be patient.  It costs very little to run an internet marketing business online, and you are likely to make money much sooner than a brick and mortar store.  Give yourself a few years of persistent work at it before you toss in the towel on internet marketing.

5. Don’t give up your “day job” and work multiple streams of income.

Let’s say you are making $60K a year at your job.  Let’s say you just had a $5K month in internet marketing (which equates to a $60K annual salary).  I have been told (because I myself am not there yet) to remember not to give up your day job until you can make that type of income consistently for at least six months.  There are ups and downs in internet marketing.  Make sure you do not AVERAGE IT OUT either.  Make a minimum of $5K for six months straight.  Then you can think about it.

The internet is pretty funny and sometimes in the blink of an eye you may get a major portion of your income taken away.  Your affiliate accounts might get closed suddenly.  For exampe, Amazon closed all their California accounts with only a few days notice in response to a bill the governer just signed.  Another example: your Google adsense account might get banned suddenly and without warning also. This is why it’s important to have a variety of incoming revenue.  And this is why it’s important to be very cautious about the money you’re making before you do quit your job.

Hope this helps!  To your success in internet marketing!

Many people are drawn to the internet for making money.  Why?  Because you hear about stories all the time of people opening website businesses up and online business up and making a lot of money.

Making money online is one of the "easiest" ways to earn an income.

Well, it’s partially true.  It is not “easy”, it takes some time, but compared to a regular store front it definitely takes a lot less money.  For someone willing to work hard, online business is a great way to earn income. However, to do so, you need to know some rules and tips.
To be successful you need a product or service that people actually want; either your own or someone else’s.  This is a big key.  And with web user psychology, you have to think about if it is worth their time to buy your product or whether they can find it elsewhere for free. People will pay for quality content and for convenience.  Instead of having to waste time searching and compiling the info they may just decide your product will work best or them.

Before you start building your web site, research to discover what people are looking for and what they really want.

•    Brainstorm ideas part 1: Think about what you yourself shop for
•    Brainstorm ideas part 2: Think about what the world at large shops for.  Alexa.com is a great site for hot topics and hot products
•    Do your keyword research so you know what search phrases to target.  Google’s keyword tool is excellent for this.
•    Check out the competition part 1:  Check out the competition for that certain product.  It needs to be enough to know it’s a good market, but not overwhelming that your website may get lost.
•    Check out the competitino part 2: Determine SEO efforts: even if there are a lot of competing websites, you just need to get onto the first page of Google.  So figure out the SEO efforts you may need to put forth to do that.
•    Check out the competition part 3: Determine your sales point and if you want to have affiliates.  Having a strong sales page and strong sales means you can attract affiliates to sell your product for you.

Here are your steps:

•    Decide on a niche that you’re interested in and that there’s a demand for, one that doesn’t have a too much competition but enough to know people are spending money in this market.
•    Produce a lot of quality content for your website.  It not only has to be good quality but also SEO optimized for your keyword phrases.
•    Build web pages full of useful, original content and turn your site into an authority in its niche.
•    Build backlinks to your site to get more traffic.

An online business is like any business: it requires consistent effort and dedication.

Then keep repeating those last steps.  Continue to produce great content.  Continue to build backlinks to your site.

Once you have a great website and traffic coming in, you have some credibility and from there it is a matter of offering a product for sale.  Do not tie yourself to one product, but add several different monetizations to your site.

For example you can offer:
•    Your own products
•    Other people’s products
•    Your own coaching services
•    Advertising such as GoogleAdsense

Sure it sounds easy, but the key to succeeding is perseverance and commitment.  This is something you definitely need to treat as your own business. You need to work on it every day. You cannot expect everyone to buy.  It is a numbers game so you need to get a lot of traffic and then from there get people to want to come back to your site.  From there, it’s a matter of having great sales copy to increase your conversions of traffic to sales.

Success depends on doing each of these steps well. If you’re motivated and you work on it every day, your website will become a great online business for you to make money online.  So you want to build my own website for an online business? Yes it is possible.  Go for it!

You can definitely do it yourself and pretty cheaply. Credit card transations is a bit more on the complicated side, PayPal is much easier, at least in the beginning.

1) Get a domain . I recommend godaddy.com

http://godaddy.com

2) Get a hosting account. I can recommend hostmonster:

http://designmyownwebsite.net/go/hostmonster.html

I’ve used a handful of webhosting companies and to be honest their support was the first that seemed to really be on top of things. Whichever hosting company you choose, I say go to the live chat at odd hours and ask presales questions and see what you think of the company. That is why I would pick hostmonster (even over the very popular hostgator)

Paypal makes it very easy to take credit card transactions online

3) Get a paypal account. You will see a “Merchant Services” tab and you can generate your own link and button and PayPal will give you the HTML to use

http://paypal.com

4) If you know HTML, you can design it on your own. Otherwise you can use WordPress to get yourself going quickly (and then use html and graphics skills to really spice up the site). WordPress is limiting if you want a lot of interaction with the user but it’s good for general layout ideas.

http://wordpress.com

There are actually some great HTML resources out there too. My personal favorite is Web Design Mastery because when I first bought it I was expecting to open up the book and learn HTML right away and instead the entire first book had NO HTML in it – all she talked about was what makes effective web design for marketing and usability – that was new to me and I really liked that approach

Good luck!