Creating a successful online business is a lot easier than you think.
Now I’m not saying you will not have to put in some time and effort but you do not need to be a computer whiz kid.
There are four steps to creating a successful online business.
Own a website
Create engaging and helpful content
Drive traffic to your website
Monetise your website
Easy right ? Well not that easy but each of these four steps is no where near as hard as you might think.
Own a website
You can own a website name for free on many online sites or platforms but it is unlikely that it will be as effective as a .com or .co.uk or other countries sites. Even if you have a name that your customers will know and search for it is likely the google search engine will put .com and .co.uk versions or even similar versions first. If however you have a business name that you can’t change and the . Com versions etc are all taken then by all means go ahead and have a platform name and then yours after.
For example if you have a florists called Flowers by Jane you would ideally want flowersbyjane.com. But if that’s taken you could go for flowersbyjane.siterubix.com using the free Wealthy Affiliate platform. You can find out more by clicking here. It’s free to join and you will learn a lot.
Or you could go for flowersbyjaneoftown.com Something to think about ? Do not rush ahead in choosing the name or buying ones that will not work for you.
If you don’t have a specific business but want to earn money online then you need to be able to decide who your audience will be. You need to find your niche market. The same rules about getting the right name apply here too.
Whatever your reason or need for online presence you need a website that will help people to find you.
This is usually the bit that scares people. You do not have to be a great writer or author, all you need to be is yourself. Write as you would speak to any potential customer that might be in your store. And that is, even if you don’t have a store, just imagine that you do and say what you want to say to them. A conversational style will keep your readers with you.
Try to give people information that they need, to make a decision on something. Keep it simple and to the point. Long essays will make people switch off in this busy world we occupy. Keep your sentences short and make good use of paragraphs and headings.
My favourite trick is to just write without pausing so I don’t forget what I want to say. Then I go back and re read it, taking out pointless words, paragraphing when I have changed subject and sometimes deleting whole chunks of information.
Remember you can save work and only publish it when you are ready. I also take advantage of the content editor within the Wealthy Affiliate platform. It checks all of my spelling and grammar. Result !
Drive traffic to your website
Driving traffic to your website if you set it up properly should enable google and all other search engines to do the work for you. You will need good Search engine optimization (SEO) tools installed within your site.
Google and other search engines will look to content in a website to point people to the most appropriate site based on what they search for.
Yes you are up against a whole lot of competition. We all know we never go past page one or two when we search for something on the internet. And all the best phrases are taken by all the large companies so they can ensure they land on the first page of results. Or are they?
What we need to do is look for low hanging fruit !
The low hanging fruit is the words or phrases that are not used by the big companies.
So as an example for this post I may have chosen the title creating an online business as we assume that may be what people are putting into google. While that has lots of searches each month it also has a lot of competition.
How to create a successful online business has fewer searches per month but very little competition so I am more likely to end up on page one if that is what someone has put in the search box. I’m picking up the low hanging fruit that most have missed.
How do I know what phrases are searched for and how much competition it has?
I use two tools. One is part of the wealthy affiliate platform which you can join for free and find out exactly how to build a successful online business. The other is Jaaxy a more comprehensive tool for finding keywords for your pages and posts. You can join get 30 free searches to see if it is helpful to you. Or you can get a free version of Jaaxy with a Premium Wealthy Affiliate subscription.
To drive traffic to your website without paying for expensive advertising you need to have a good keyword rich title and use that title once in your first paragraph. The rest of the content is just whatever you want to say.
Monetise your website
Now if you have a website that is getting traffic you are probably but not necessarily going to want to make money from it. No matter what is your niche or area of expertise there is someone out there wanting you to sell their products for them. Amazon is probably the largest Company out there wanting you to sell their customers products for them (Amazon actually only owns one product itself) You can become an Amazon affiliate and then choose what applicable products you want to promote. They do work on low commissions though. Up to 8%, but that can soon add up.
There are thousands of affiliate programs out there just search your niche+ affiliate programme and see what you can find. There are independents out there who will be more than happy to pay you to promote their products.
All you will have to do is copy and paste a link in your website. See the word Jaaxy is highlighted. That just has a link which I copied and pasted and it will take you right to their site. Simple.
What you do not want to do is promote products that have no relevance to your audience or you will soon lose your website visitors. You also do not want to have product links all over your site. Google won’t like it. Your visitors won’t like it. The best way to promote products is by reviewing them and linking other pages to the review. Customers will like it because they get a choice and google will like it because you will not look like a landing site for selling products.
Any Questions?
I hope you have found this page helpful. If you have any questions or need any help please comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
With Grace and Gratitude
Karen
Please note that this page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on one and make a purchase, I will make a small commission but it will not cost you any more