Thanks to my new friend Don, I got a question through my ‘Dear Martin‘ page this week, about how to start an Internet Business.
As it turns out Don was way ahead of where I assumed he was in his on-line work, so most of what I gave him was of little use (to him, at any rate).
Also, I misunderstood Don’s question and thought he was starting an on-line real estate business – meaning the buying and selling of houses.
I was wrong.
But that’s why the post below refers occasionally to real estate.
Despite it being of little use to Don, I’ve posted my response anyway, in the hope of benefitting other people who, because of the economic situation, may be thinking about making some extra money on-line for the first time.
So here are some (very basic) steps to starting an Internet Business.
1. Start off with a detailed plan for your business.
Get clear in your mind the precise objectives you have for your website and what you want to do with it.
For example, do you want it to act as a brochure to catch new customers and get them to visit or call your business, or do you want to allow people to actually transact on the site – e.g. make viewing appointments or search for properties, etc.
Get very clear in your mind exactly what you want your site to do for your business, as this will influence how you design it.
2. Outsource or Insource?
Part of this plan should also identify what bits of your on-line work you will do yourself and which bits you will outsource.
For example, if you’re good at marketing but know nothing about website design you may want to outsource the site design but take care of the marketing and promotion yourself.
This will also apply to maintaining and updating your site. By its nature a real estate site will need regular updating as new properties come on and older ones are sold.
This could become quite time consuming if you’re turning over properties regularly.
3. Copy writing
Keep in mind that writing for the web is different from writing hard copy, because people read websites differently from the way they read off-line stuff.
You should make sure that you understand how writing for the web differs from writing hard copy – or find someone to outsource it to.
Here’s a great copy writing resource – in fact it’s the best resource I know of for learning how to write for the web.
4. Website Design
Next it’s important to make sure that your website is properly constructed.
The reason this is important is that building a site properly means that the search engines will find it more easily and return it in search results more regularly.
This will greatly improve the amount of quality visitors you get.
If you plan to build it yourself and you’re new to website design there are some good packages you can get that are basically website templates.
They present you with fields to fill in which they then turn into the correctly formatted META data.
You can then concentrate on producing the content.
5. Marketing and Promotion
You will also need to work out a marketing and promotion plan for your website.
Getting good quality visitors to a site takes time and work, unfortunately, despite all the wild promises of instant success you see everywhere on-line
“Build it and they’ll come” may have applied 10 years ago. It definitely doesn’t apply today.
So you need to develop a solid marketing and promotion plan.
6. Funding
And all of this will, of course, need to be funded. So create a budget for your site development based on the objectives that you set for it at the outset.
Once you’ve got all that clear in your mind let me know what questions you have and how else I can help.
You’re inevitably going to need to buy either services or training and I can probably point you in the right direction in most cases. Ask me through the ‘Dear Martin‘ page or leave a comment here.
Also, if you’re thinking about starting a website for the first time you may want to check out my beginner’s Internet Marketing course. It’s free and it’s here.
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A good setting of goals for an online business is really very vital. Like what you made mention, a thorough planning is crucial since it really make or break the online business you are going to pursue.
Leanie Belle
Not just an online business – any business. The problem is that people often don’t think about an online business in the same way they would think about an off-line one.
Cheers,
Martin.
You are dead on in your advice for starting an internet business. Many people think that it is easy and can make you rich in a hurry but fail to realize that a business is a business whether it is run from your garage, retail outlet or online.
You still have to have a plan and systems in place if you want to succeed.
Thanks
Rick
Rick´s last blog post..Online Business is Easy, Right?
Rick, hi,
Yep – it’s a continual battle to get people to realise that this is the same as any other business!
I like that theme you’re using – very clean and presents a lot of content to visitors without being in your face. Very nice.
Cheers,
Martin.
Thanks for the link, I should check it out. The difference of writing for the web and writing for print somewhat confuses me. I always thought it should be the same – the same approach, at the very least. I’ll look into that link. Thanks again!
You’re welcome! Writing on the web is definitely different from writing offline – the different medium forces it to be.
CopyBlogger’s great – I’ve been a subscriber for 2 years now and I’m still learning new stuff
Cheers,
Martin.
A large problem is the impression all these ‘look at how much I make online’ type products we see. It gives so many people the impression it’s easy. You don’t see that same sort of thing in the offline world. I don’t get bombarded with products telling me how easy it will be for me to make piles of money running a franchise or something to that affect.
The internet paints success stories, but the hard work and failures never make it to the canvass.
It has all the same fundamentals, business plans, marketing, possibly employees, customer service, building the site (or building).
There is nothing get rich quick about it, but it can certainly be very rewarding for those who stick through it and think of it like a business and treat it like one.
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