Online Internet Business Start Up Guide
Your online Internet business start up needn’t be a gamble.
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Yet, I regularly hear some version of the following lament: “I’ve tried everything the gurus told me, and all I’ve got to show for it is maxed out credit cards…”
Admittedly everyone’s Internet marketing story is unique. However, the various paths to success, and to failure, are strikingly similar. For example, in 2000, I paid over $6,000.00 to have a website built. $6,000 for a website may not sound real dumb to you. |
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But consider this:
_ I didn’t have a product or service to sell.
_ I couldn’t personally edit or control the content.
_ Changes as minor as editing a sentence, required updating by the company’s employees.
_ Every change meant extra fees for me.
Back in 2000, I wasn’t much dumber than the average person coming online. So, why would I pay 6 grand for a website which was essentially a wasteland?
The Answer?
I was new, and ignorant, to the concepts of establishing an online business. Without knowing better, I was sold on the faulty idea that Internet Marketing was built upon a foundation involving the intricacy of online technology.
Although I never made another $6,000 mistake, this was just one of many mistakes as I struggled to find a reliable method to get my Internet business going.
Some snafu’s were small, and easy to shrug off. Others were spiritually draining because of all the work and trust I’d invested in them.
I wanted to give up more than once…
But, like rubbing a broken tooth with the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t escape the idea of working and making money online from home.
Eventually, I realized I wasn’t making mistakes. Instead of failing, I was learning business lessons. It was up to me to classify them as valuable or as wasted efforts.
It’s said that Thomas Edison tried over 10,000 times before he made a working electric light model.
It’s also said that when a reporter asked Mr. Edison what it felt like to fail thousands of times before succeeding, Mr. Edison replied with something like the following: “There were no failures in my process. I was merely eliminating methods that didn’t work…”
In a small way, my online business experiences have been something like that…
It wasn’t planed, but I had to eliminate a lot of online marketing methods that didn’t work for me. And, in doing so, it took me until 2001 before I began using a simple, and repeatable, method which made me money almost every day.
The curious thing is: This same method still works today, 10 years later!
In practice though, the basic methodology has evolved along with how people use the Internet. Which is both a blessing and a curse.
It’s a curse because now there are more ‘benchmarks’ you have to meet. For example, you should now bring web 2.0 sites, social sites and profile directories, into your personal business web. Because there weren’t any web 2.0 sites, or Facebook type social sites in 2001, this is added work to my original processes.
On the other hand, having powerful linking/traffic sources like Linkedin, YouTube and Facebook is a blessing for Internet marketers.
Plus they’re easy to use: you only have to set up lenses on Squidoo, profiles on Linkedin, and pages on Facebook, to use their heavyweight positioning for links back to your business.
Using them for selling and marketing takes a great deal more work than we want to detail here.
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Another change since 2001, is niche selection. Because of the growing number of new Internet business operations, choosing a niche, or picking your target market, is now more exacting and more complicated than it’s ever been.
Some days I’ve felt like it’s impossible to unearth a decent niche which doesn’t already have entrenched and fierce competition. Yet, picking a profitable niche to target, is crucial for your online Internet business start up. |
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On the other hand, there are software tools you can now use to research niches, decipher keywords and evaluate the strength of competition. They’re not failsafe solutions, but I’d not go into a new niche without using them.
Likewise with SEO strategies. Lots of changes since 2001.
The most obvious change, of course, is the increase in the number of websites. It’s my theory that we’re competing against any, and all, websites… not just sites focused upon our particular niche target.
Thus, it’s harder now to get free search engine traffic than it was at the turn of the 21st century.
On the same time, there are more avenues to leverage web page rankings than ever before.
Perhaps the best news about Internet marketing in the 2011 is the ease of building and controlling website properties.
For example, anyone who can write and send an email, is capable of building, uploading, and editing content for a personally owned WordPress blog in less than an hour. That’s totally amazing for someone who started out like I did…
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What we have is this:
_ Today is the most competitive time in history to start an Internet business. Every day sitting on the sidelines is another day for your competition to grow stronger. And every day you spend eliminating marketing methods that don’t work for you, is another day for your competition to gain leverage for their online position over your business. |
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If you want to start a profitable Internet business, can you afford to hesitate?
You don’t have the luxury of waiting for a more suitable time to start an online business. Your time is now. The faster you start making massive failure lessons, the quicker you’ll fail your way to success. And, the sooner you position your Internet presence within a specific niche, the more leverage you’ll gain within that target market.
Since starting out in 2000, I’ve learned strategies and marketing methods that could help you. From the many lessons I’ve blundered into, I’ve crystallized many of the crucial ones on this website and pass them along to subscribers of my generic business and life principles email newsletter.
Samples:
_ Your Idea/Niche Selection
_ Competition: The Good and The Bad
_ Keyword Research & Keyword Selection Process
_ Choosing & Registering Domain Name
_ Requirements Of The Right Web Host
_ Designing a Website Vs Content Management System
_ Content Creation Rules
_ Article Marketing Guidelines
_ Lead Capture Solutions
_ Relationship Building Strategies
_ Strategies To Survive While You’re Learning How To Make Money Online…
From a recent subscriber:
Dear ED
You are a ray of sunshine in a Dark Dark world, I have been trying to make money on the net for just over 2 years now, & the BS i have had to dig through is unbeliverable that i gave up But now i am back & i have come accross your site i feel that there is hope for me, thanks ED for your wonderful service. Blessings Paul
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It’s possible you could benefit from my learning experiences. There’s only one way to know: Try Me. Fill out the subscription form located just to the right.
You can easily and quickly unsubscribe at any time. I have no problem with that… |
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Stay casual,
Edward ‘Mr Ed’ Thorpe “He who helps the most people Wins!”
P.S. Online business marketing is like a popularity contest wherein your Internet business is competing against all other web entities for the attention of a finite number of eyeballs. Click This Link To Get More Eyeballs
