You can make wheelbarrows of money by following these tips
For most people, getting inspired to start an online business can be very difficult. Many believe that the internet is simply filled with riches and that all one has to do is get a domain name, web hosting for your website, an OK website, a Paypal widget and Voila! Lots of money will just start to roll in. That's very nice, but I wish it were that simple. If it were nobody would wait on tables, work construction, or do jobs that are required to get all kinds of goods and services into the hands of consumers.
Believing in this pipe dream is not the difficult part in starting an online business, after all there are thousands of websites, blogs, capture pages and as many money making scams as there are letters from scammers who claim your e mail address just won 26,000,000 dollars. We all want a piece of the online pie, nothing wrong with it really. I do.
Where people get stuck
Most people don't get stuck at the starting gate. That is to say, they get their domain name, web host, dabble a bit with the website and it just gets parked there. No further activity. After a while, sometimes months later, the person realizes that he's spent about $100 and has to come to a decision: "Do I take this all the way or give up?"
Most give up and don't give their website a chance, or should I say they don't give themselves a chance. They have come to a stuck point and most rather quit than keep going. But where's the problem?
Picking a niche
I have surveyed quite a few people and the above just keeps coming up worded in many different ways: "If I just knew what I wanted to sell"; "There's too much competition out there. I can't think of anything!"; "I've tried many different things and nothing seems to work"; "If I could just find that 'perfect' niche, I'd be doing Internet marketing!"
Do any of the above apply to you? If you're reading this post, I would say that it is so. But don't worry. There IS a solution to this problem. You can easily overcome it.
Just pick a niche and go with it
This may sound very overly simplistic. Trust me. It is not. Most people will not do that. They get caught up in the four examples I gave you above about niche discovery and establishing their website presence.
Let's pick the last example of the list above: "If I could just find that 'perfect' niche, I'd be doing Internet marketing!" A good friend of mine actually got caught up in this one and didn't do anything for years, even though he knew what Internet marketing was about. He had the basics down, but this stumbling block became just that a "block".
I had a talk with him and gave him an analogy: "Do you eat?" He said: "Of course I do, but what do you mean?" I replied: "When you go hungry you don't look to go to 'the perfect' restaurant, or the 'perfect' supermarket. You establish where you'll go and then plan out your route, resources, etc. and just go." There's not much thinking involved here.
Believe it or not. Niche building and site construction and maintenance are a very similar activities.
1. You determine there is something you're interested in that you wouldn't mind having a website or blog about (Here's the food: People may find your site and "eat your words", sort of speak).
2. You then figure out whether you need a paid or non paid domain name (Google Blogger allows you this). This is your store address: where people will go to read and buy your words or information (more on this later).
3. You then get web hosting to contain your goods (words and info). This is your store. You then hire a builder to build your store the way you want it. You can be your own builder or hire one. There are many do it your self web editors (some good, some not so good), or you can buy software to make your pages more professionally. But don't get stuck on this one. I use Blogger for some of my blogs. They may not look fancy, but thanks to Blogger's advances, blogs are beginning to get fancier and have a more professional look these days.
4. You now begin to add your unique content. It's like adding merchandise and frills at a store, so that customers have something to buy. Without content, how can anyone expect to get clients? I have seen some very crappy sites that have lousy content and very little of it, to boot. I guess whoever built the site or blog bought into some guru's "advice" of set and forget it attitude. You know, those that have Piña Colada under the balmy palm laying on their romps with Hawaiian flower shirts, while they collect millions from their "auto pilot websites".
5. You now mind your website. Autopilot sites disappear eventually. Google's ever changing algorithms make sure of that. This is possibly the hardest, but it's actually the funnest. This comes in many ways: You tweak your content, correct errors, add more content, re tweak if need be, add advertisers ( if an info site), add gadgets and even a shopping cart (very similar to what supermarkets do). If you forget most of this, you'll refresh it by just remembering this supermarket analogy and you won't go wrong.
Sounds like too much work? Well, sorry to tell you this, but that is what it takes. Supermarkets that don't have all their ducts in a row simply don't succeed or stay in business long. Think of how many you have gone to that later decided not to go back to. Their produce wasn't fresh, their isles were too narrow, product selection was poor and it was a pain to hand your money at the check out: long lines of impatient customers.
A website or blog is very
much like this. Provide lousy content, make your site difficult to
navigate by adding too many affiliate gadgets and links, pop ups, hover
ads, general B.S. and don't make it easy for your public to pay and they won't come
back. It's that simple.
If you find yourself running out of steam go to my post: "How to remain productive when you feel like giving up". It will pick you up again. If you require further inspiration or technical expertise, chances are that I've covered the subject in this blog. Just do a search on the search box on the upper right side of this blog.
Getting inspired to pick your niche
A niche is a specialized field of endeavor that you'll embark on. By definition it implies a field where you'll have a special advantage over your competition. For example: if you pick the Make Money Online niche, you may get frustrated easily. It is heavily competed and I doubt that it deserves to be called a niche anymore. Just do a search on that term and you'll find the search results in the billions! So you better be good at it or you'll work very hard, get little return for your efforts and quit very soon.
How do I know? I've been there and done that. I bought into some very crappy systems that painted pretty pictures, like the guy in the Hawaiian shirt and eventually wised up and picked other true niches that actually make me money for real. I've created many "online supermarkets". One of these is the shutters business, Make Money Blogging and this site. I don't make millions, but when I work hard at it I do make decent money and have a clear conscience knowing that nobody got ripped.
When you pick a niche, don't strive for perfection, just figure out what you like doing, are fairly good at and is in demand. My friend above is good at Home Improvement, Real Estate and knowledgeable of "The ducts in a row" that you need to create a website. He was just stuck on the "Perfect niche" problem. We went back and forth and now he's inspired to get his own website to be an Internet Marketer.
I know that the idea is to make money online. But oddly enough when you put that there first and not a good product or service that buyers will want to buy, you won't make money. You must add value and lots of it in the Make Money Online equation. Work on your product value and service first and the money should come once you set up your site correctly.
Don't concentrate on "Make Money Online" as your niche per se. Instead mix it up with other keywords such as "Make money selling cookies online", or "Great ideas to making money from home", and turn these into your domain names, areas of expertise and then blogs or sites.
You can create, if you use Blogger or Word Press (they're both free) hundreds of quality blogs which you properly monetize. The only limit will be how much time you'll want to put in initially to get it all going and eventually make money with them.
Once you see some cash in your mailbox from these, you'll know you're on the right track and repeat and rinse. The money at this point will be well earned and you'll feel an immense sense of pride. use it as you wish and reinvest some of it back into the process. It will grow exponentially, along with your earnings.
Some Internet Marketers will then encounter another problem: "How can I keep all of this going? I'm only one person!" Well, that's the subject of another post which I'll bring to you soon. Stay tuned.
As an aside, people see very easily through scams these days or even those sites that lure you into buying into their bogus "systems". I highly suggest you don't follow this dead end stream.
You'll know if it's potentially bogus when you land on a very well written "capture page" that won't let you leave. Click bank is full of these and I HIGHLY don't recommend buying anything there. Buy at your own risk and ONLY once you know what you're doing and have a few scam searches or review searches on the "product".
I know that niche picking can be intimidating. But the most intimidation actually comes from all the voices in your head that tell you what not to do instead of what you should do. So just DO IT!
Niche picking examples
Let's say that you love animals and know how to take care of them. You are actually passionate about this. You do an online search under "Proper care for your pet" and realize that there are 200,000 million results or so (not bad) and that there are sites that actually pay Google to be listed. This is called Adsense. This tells you 2 things: It's a specialized niche that doesn't seem to have the overwhelming competition of the Make Money Online "niche". And if you get advertisers for your site or blog, you can make money with their ads by placing them on your site.
If you are building an info blog or site, the above 2 points are of the utmost importance. If you do a search on say: "20 ways to skin fish" and find tons of results with few or no advertisers, skip it. This is one way of eliminating pain and agony later, that is unless you're rich and just want to communicate about your fish skills.
You know a lot about Latin food and wonder if there is a market for Online Latin recipes that people are willing to pay a buck or so to get from you. You find out using the two pointers above that there is a potential to make money at this, so you just do it.
You may then get a domain name such as www.FantasticLatinRecipes.com. Go ahead and register it if you wish. It maybe available.
OK, I see that some light bulbs are already going off in your head. I could belabor this post some more by telling you how to structure your pages, keywords selection and all that good stuff. But you got all of this for free from me. Click on my Go Daddy Affiliate gadget to get started:
Or, if you are on a very tight budget, just start with Blogger or Word Press.
I hope I have inspired you to start your online business. I will add links to tools on this post later (free and paid designer software, keyword tools, etc.) that will help you to build killer sites. Such will give you better online presence and help you to make money and have lots of fun helping others.
Tune in again soon,
Carlos
Inspiration for your day