If you have an idea, service and/or a product and think it can net you some income, you should consider setting up an online business. You should aim to create a job that does not require heavy hours and workload to be profitable.
This report on how to successfully launch a business online will help you accomplish that. Truly, the internet in modern times has revolutionized our way of life, to offer a place where we as individual entrepreneurs can compete against global giants. In the age of the Internet, everyone should consider having an online business.
The most common hurdle one encounters on this journey, is information overload.
With this guide, we hope to offer some straightforward steps to setting up your business online and avoid overload.
We have divided our strategy into 3 steps:
1. Researching Your Business Opportunity
The first and arguably most important step in launching a successful business online is to research your market. Start with competitors to see what they are doing, what you like about their websites and what you would change… Then you have to establish as best as you can, early in your business venture:
- a) Potential audience of your product
- b) Websites your audience visit
- c) Forums of similar products
- d) Social Media related to your product
- e) Chat rooms related to your product
Plan Create Promote
Your goal will be to create a website and tone-of-voice in your writing that will be geared towards those who are interested in your product/service. You will also have to establish what your ‘niche’ is. Establishing a ‘niche’ is critical, because it is a lot easier to market a product/service to a specific group instead of trying to market your product/service to the whole world.
Then once you have built a strong understanding of your products market, if you need to raise capital you have to form a business plan. We do not go into that topic in this guide because theoretically you could launch an on-line business for absolutely free.
2. Create a Website
We divided this topic into 3 sub-topics that are tightly related:
- a) Domain name: Your brand online is recognized and remembered via your domain name. Choose a domain name that will uniquely identify your business.
- b) Web hosting: You have 3 concerns with hosting: capacity (speed, bandwidth and optimization), security and value-for-price.
- c) Website creation: In this day-and-age it is quite feasible for anyone to create at least semi-professional website all on their own. If you happen to be tech-savy, this will come fairly easily. But to reach the next level of website design and professionalism, it helps to employ an experienced designer who has created successful websites in the past.
We obviously specialize in this step, we do free consultation and evaluations – so please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions!
3. Market
Work Both Smart and Hard
This step is obviously critical, you can create the best product in the world with the best website in the world and still fail miserably. If you did your research, you should have a strong idea of who your target market is. In which case you have many tools at your disposal, we wanted to list some of the free options:
- a) SEO: search engine optimization – this will require knowledge and research on how to optimize your website so it will show up in search-engine lists for keywords related to your market
- b) Website Directories – this will help list your website on the internet and increase traffic
- c) Blogs – Article Directories – this will help bring traffic if you write appealing articles
- d) Forums – post free advice and help people on the forums, this can help create leads to business
- e) Post in Local Business Listings – the online directories are invaluable for finding local customers
- f) Social Media – create a buzz with controversial or funny content and try to spread it on the social media networks
We have layed out in easily digestable steps how to launch a business online. We hope this has been a useful report to help start or upgrade your online presence. Please contact us if you have any questions at all!