Many people often wonder why I am on the internet so often. When I explain to them that I run my own online business, they are almost immediately interested and want to know how they can start their own as well. For all those that are wondering…
What are the steps in creating an online business?
Essentially there are four major steps; finding a profitable niche, getting your own domain name and web host, monetizing your new website, and finally promoting it.
Step 1) To find a profitable niche, you need to ask yourself first what interests you. What are the things that you can write about that you have more than an average amount of knowledge on?
Once you find the answer to these questions, you’ll need to do a bit of research to see if that niche will be profitable for you. To do this you will need to use a keyword tool. There are a few free keyword tools you can use. I use the Google Adwords keyword tool.
What you need to do is look for 5 common keywords for your niche, add them up and make sure that the total of all 5 keywords equals up to at least 75,000 – 100,000 searches per month. If it does, great! That means when you optimize your site, it will be possible to get enough traffic to make your site profitable.
Step 2) You will now need to pick a domain name, i.e. url, and select your web host. This is a real easy process. You can register your domain name for about $10 a year and find a host to host your domain for about $8 – 25 a month.
Whatever you do, do not select a free host! Many of the free hosts will spam your website with their own ads, limit you to the amount of traffic you can receive, and they can choose to terminate your website with little or no reason at all.
Step 3) Setup your website and monetize it. If you aren’t skilled in html code or creating websites, it would be smart to have this part done for you. Many people/companies will work with you and build you a custom site. Otherwise there are plenty of free templates ou can install or look at installing a free WordPress blog as your site platform.
After you decide which route to go for your website platform, you need to decide how you are going to make money from it. There are many ways to do this as well. You can ad Adsense, sell affiliate products and programs, sell ad spaces, sell your own info products, or promote pay per lead banners.
You may not be able to determine which method to use until you have experimented with many different methods. Spy on your competitors to see how they are making their money.
Step 4) Promote the hell out of your site! You can write articles, use traffic exchange programs, pay-per-click advertising, solo ezine ads, write blog posts, book mark blog posts, use off-line efforts, and leave comments on other blogs. That’s just a few of the many ways you can get traffic to your site.
You should set up a daily game plan, write it down and stick to that list every day no matter what. Making money online is a numbers game, and if you aren’t actively promoting your site every day, your competition will take all of your traffic.
Matt Helphrey