Make Money with Your On-Line Business
is a rewrite and update to
Can You Really Make Money On-Line in Business?
first published on 25 October 2011
If you already have an off-line business, it stands to reason, if your business model is capable of moving to the Internet, then it is just a matter of time before you will be doing business on the Internet too.
Of course, it helps if you have a customer base that you have built up over the years. Your current local customer's can start using your Internet business site right away. New customer's can find you by referrals from your current customer base, by word of mouth or by the customer comments you collect from them and publish at your Internet business site.
If you have not yet moved part or all of your off-line business to some type of Internet business presence, what are you waiting for?
If you can think up a creative name for a blog, you can start exposing your own business to the Internet through Blogger just by signing up for an account today.
Of course some of your best options are to have at least one or more sites specifically dedicated to a store, products or services.
If you are considering some options for a site, a one page site, similar to a brochure for your business is the easiest way to start. Just putting the business phone number on your site will, at the very least, give potential customers a way of contacting you.
Your business site should also provide your business address, how you accept payments and an email address for visitors to contact you through email.
Would a mail list help?
That depends on your business and how much relevant information you wish to publish on a regular basis about your business. When you publish information to your site or sites, any prior site visitor's may have bookmarked your site or accessed RSS feeds of your site, so they will get the information. But that does not mean they will view or act on the information.
A mail list dedicated to one specific site that is popular with visitor's is always a good idea...and here is why!
If your site already contains great information for it's intended purpose, then site visitor's are more likely to join your mail list, especially if they feel it is more beneficial for them.
Mail list subscriber's are just that though, mail list subscriber's.
Having a list of subscriber's for site news letters does not guarantee that a subscriber will read or act upon any of the information in your email messages.
Your mail lists will always only contain subscriber's if that is all you want!
It is totally up to you, the mail list owner, what you do with those subscriber's.
Of course once you have subscriber's, it is in your best interest to convert your subscriber's into customer's who purchase what you offer on a consistent basis. When you have that, you have a very responsive email customer list, instead of just an email subscriber list.
There is nothing wrong with building buyer-only email lists, as long as you are up front about the list you are creating and the subscriber's are customer's. This type of list is your own very valuable premium mail list and can provide waves of consistent residual income but usually must be built consistently over time with subscriber's who know and trust you or our products and services.
Advertising of your own relevant products and services and any specific affiliate products, services or business system's that you may consider beneficial for your site visitor's can make or break your overall site.
So you should be a bit careful about promotions on your site as well as any recommendations you provide in your email news letters because this will directly affect your sites growth.
If a site visitor can find your site beneficial with useful information, in more ways than one, then you tend to stand out from your competitors within your niche. This increases the chances of visitor's consistently returning to your site, making a purchase and subscribing to your site services. (Email List or Memberships)
Find Out What Your Site Visitor's or Email Subscriber's Want From You!
Once you have an on-line business platform with some form of an established customer base from sales of initial products or services, you can then poll those customer's to find out what else they may need or want from you!
Once you do this, the results of your polling should show you what to focus on for your next product or service offering.
Keep in mind that if current customer's are asking for product or services you do not or cannot directly offer, you do have the option of presenting them with alternatives to help them get products or services.
Affiliate system's such as Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction work well to help you and your customer's or follower's, especially when you or your business uses those products.
You can give your customer's or follower's valid reason's for your own use of a product or service, which in turn they may relate to and then possibly purchase for their own use too.
With mail lists though, once you send out the information, it is only available to those on your list. Alternatively, publishing only the necessary information at your site or even just using a dedicated blog about your business, products or services would always keep information out there for everyone to see.
Wordpress is a very reliable blogging platform and when combined with some free feature rich extended capabilities, it alone can be used as a complete Internet business site.
If you don't mind handling phone calls, as well as collecting needed information from prospective new customer's, creating a simple one page site may be just the ticket for your business.
Wordpress can be used to create a one page or you can skip Wordpress altogether and opt to create just one html page, if you are familiar with html.
In fact, you can download Open Office for free and create an html page for your one page site and then upload that page to your web site. Of course you do need to be aware of essential details for creating your web page, which is why some people opt for Wordpress and create one page.
Wordpress and other blogging platforms are now a part of most hosting provider packages. In other words, when you are ready to get started online with a business website, you will first acquire your domain name. Once you have a domain name, you will then need web space or hosting for it. Usually in the hosting account itself, as part of the software programs to help you with your web site, Wordpress is available for you to use as the primary platform for your site or to install in a folder and as a blog as an add-on to your main site.
Wordpress also has it's own complete blogging platform at Wordpress. Some people prefer using the Wordpress site to host their blog, rather than install and use Wordpress on their web site. To present a professional on-line business image, it may be best to use Wordpress on your own site rather than using the Wordpress site.
Wordpress can help you get the information correctly formatted and presented on the Internet and maximize seo (search engine optimization), but as with anything, there is a learning curve and a full installation of Wordpress is a bit of overkill for a one page site.
Whether your site is just plain html, php or even a combination of web technologies as long as you can manage it and it helps you get your point across to site visitors and customers, that is all that matters
Depending on your site content and the level of interaction with your site visitors, you may also need to publish terms of service, a privacy policy and possibly disclaimers at your site.
If you do not have a business yet and are thinking about acquiring or developing an on-line business you will need to carefully consider exactly what you intend to do in your on-line business.
I have had my own computer support services business operating since 1993.
When I first started that business, it involved directly supporting my customer's computer hardware and software as well as helping them integrate new things into their overall computer operations.
Nowadays though most of my work is centered around site hosting and development services, since most hardware and software setups are more disposable and replaced at the user level, requiring less technical support.
There are some very good Internet businesses out there, but unfortunately there are also a lot of very bad ones too.
Whether you choose to join an ongoing business or create your own niche business, you will need to set aside time every day to work at it to build it properly. There are many factors to consider, so gathering all the information you can for your market before you start committing to it, is best.
As the saying goes, do not try to re-invent the wheel. There are already time tested and proven methods out there for pursuing different types of businesses. Your best avenue is to begin working with what you are most passionate about or are most familiar with and building out from there.
Depending on the people around you, you may find it hard at times to continue especially if you are working on something to provide long-term residual income.
From experience, I can tell you there are many more people willing to persecute you for your interests, rather than help you.Success at anything requires good mentors, the correct advice, persistence, tolerance and possibly more failure than you currently have seen. Anyone who tells you it is easy better be willing to show you their easy way.
Have I been successful at creating my own on-line business that is generating a decent income that I can live on for the rest of my life?
No, but I am a lot closer to that reality today than I was few years ago.
I still need to work part-time and full time jobs and maintain my additional business interests, if I expect to succeed at it though.
I have earned a lot of money in the past with my own local business, and I expect to keep doing that as I move forward with my Internet businesses as well.
