Top 10 Secret Tips For Online Business Success
Online businesses do not succeed by accident or without effort. Of the thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs who start an online business each year, only a small percentage will succeed. A recent survey estimates that a staggering 90% of new Internet businesses fail within the first year.
You can avoid being part of that disturbing statistic. I have put together the top 10 secret tips for online business success. This may not be what you expect to hear, but if more entrepreneurs paid attention to them, there would be many more success stories.
1. Have a plan
It all starts with a plan. In principle, the online business is no different from a real business in the real world. The people who fail in online businesses are often those who think that making money online “sounds like a good idea” instead of seeing it as a real business. They jump in with no idea what they want to do or how to run their business.
Planning should involve:
– what kind of business are you going to start online
– what it will cost
– how you will market it
– what tools and skills you need to get started
– how you will finance your online business efforts
– how much time do you have to dedicate to it
– how and where you will connect and make business connections
Without taking stock of factors like these before you start, you’ll be lucky to achieve any kind of success.
2.Add action
Taking action is what separates most online business successes from failures.
That “Make a Million Online” seminar you attended, presented by the best minds in online business? It’s worth nothing if you don’t act on what you learn.
That ebook full of secret online business strategies? They are worthless until you actually use them.
That brilliant product idea spinning in your head? Stop dreaming about it and create it.
While there are other factors as well, you have to realize that you cannot win the game if you are not in the game. Never let the fear of failure stop you. If you never try, you’ve already failed.
3. Learn to test and trace
Yes, it can be a pain to test and track the results…until you finally do and realize how much money you’ve been leaving on the table.
Imagine writing a sales letter for your $30 product and converting 2% of all visitors to sales. One hundred sales per month is $3,000 in your pocket.
Now imagine if simply changing the headline of that sales letter converted 3% of your visitors into sales. You would have been losing $1,500 per month.
Testing and monitoring is crucial to fine-tune your marketing campaigns for maximum benefit, especially when you pay for traffic.
4. Forget perfection
Repeat after me: it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to work.
Many people spend months tweaking their websites on their computers without putting them online. They spend months trying to perfect a product instead of publishing and marketing it.
Don’t get bogged down trying to get everything in order before launch.
An ugly website that is actually active on the internet can make money and can be modified to work better. A beautiful one sitting unpublished on your hard drive will not only make you no money, it won’t even give you real world data to improve it.
Believe it, then get it out. With all his flaws.
5. Keep your focus
Focus on doing one thing at a time and doing it well. Getting your business off the ground is the hardest part. Focusing on too many tasks, too many revenue streams, and pursuing too many different opportunities will dilute your efforts and make you confused and overwhelmed.
Many new online entrepreneurs suffer from this because there are so many income opportunities available. They start one thing, then abandon it for the next brilliant opportunity that presents itself. Very soon they are trapped between 7 or 8 unfinished projects, with no income and a lot of disappointment.
Realize that you can’t chase them all. Decide the business with which you are going to start and focus your efforts on it.
6. Create multiple traffic streams
There are a wide variety of ways to generate traffic online. The more you can use, the higher your potential income and the more secure your online livelihood.
For example, if you’ve decided to do affiliate marketing and your only source of traffic is Google, you’re on shaky ground. If Google decides to penalize your sites for any reason, or an algorithm change lowers your rankings, most of your revenue can be gone overnight.
Make sure that over time you set up different streams of income that draw your traffic from different sources. The “all eggs in one basket” approach is dangerous in the volatile field of online marketing.
7. Create and maintain a mailing list
This remains one of the most important secrets to online business success. A well-maintained mailing list can earn you money every time you send a message. It is a robust and trend-proof way to secure an income online.
Build your list and treasure it. Provide value to your subscribers and build a strong relationship with them.
8. Provide value
Truly valuable websites, products, and services take on a life of their own. They get more social sharing, more word of mouth exposure, and affiliates are more likely to promote them.
It is possible to make money online by selling low-quality products or creating low-quality websites. The problem is, you’ll have to do all the legwork and start from scratch every time search engines drop your fraudulent content, or your product’s bad reputation starts killing your sales.
9. Get rid of destructive myths
Have you ever heard any of these phrases:
– Make money while you sleep
– Be your own boss and work whenever you want
– Earn $X00,000 dollars working only 2 hours a day
These are the typical myths and hype that marketers use to sell their dream business online. Is it any wonder then that so many startups fail?
Acquire an entrepreneurial mindset – one that expects hard work, failure, long hours, and a steep learning curve before expecting rewards. That simple change alone will already put you well ahead of most new online business owners.
10. Learn how to outsource
This is a tough question for control freaks. If you want something to work out, do it yourself. Good?
That philosophy may be true in some cases, but in online business it will hold you back. Time really is money, and you need to use the precious time you have to focus on your strengths.
You will definitely have some bad experiences with outsourcing. However, once you’ve sorted the good from the bad, you’ll have assembled a handful of trustworthy people who will help you build your business just as you would have built it yourself, and perhaps even better.
Good luck with your online business. Ignore the hype, do your planning, work hard and never give in to the fear of failure.