I’ll start with the essentials……
First, you need a market to sell to. Not having one is like trying to set up a business in a ghost town. You might get some customers, but they won’t come around much!
Second, you need a product to sell. That could be your own product, or it could be somebody else’s product you promote for a commission (called an affiliate product). This is what will put money in your pocket.
Third, you’ll need a domain. I suggest starting with a “.com” address, because it looks much more professional. And pick a domain that’s your own name,
if it’s available. That will give you a foundation to build on, no matter what direction you want to go, and will let you build your personal brand.
Fourth, you need a website. It just makes things so much easier if you have a site that you control and can change however you want.
Fifth, you need an autoresponder. This lets you build a mailing list and keep in contact with the people on it. That’s where your long-term income will come from. I recommend Get Response. And once you have your autoresponder set up, check out Email Promos Exposed to learn how to
write promotional emails that convert like crazy.
Sixth, you should consider setting up a blog at a separate site. This is a great way to keep your content fresh, which will get you more free traffic from search engines. And linking to your main site from your blog can help your search engine rank for your main site as well. I recommend Wordpress or
Blogger.
Seventh, you’ll need a payment processor, which is a way to take credit card payments online. I strongly recommend ClickBank, because they’re reliable and secure. They’ll also give you a built-in affiliate program, and they’ll handle paying your affiliates for you.
That’s literally all you need. There are other things that you CAN have, but those are the essentials.
Even the “Average Joe” can do this…..
The way to get started is to find a market that needs a product you can offer at a profit. That’s as fancy as it gets.
You can offer a physical product or a digital one. To keep things simple and low-cost, I suggest starting with a digital product, meaning one that people can buy and download immediately.
Here’s where I might shock a few readers…
Your first product can be VERY simple. You might write a brief report called something like “10 List Building Tips If You’re Starting From Zero!”
The point is, find a market, find what they want to know, then offer it to them. What most people just starting out overlook is that most of the information
is available for free online.
Use Google to research your topic. Visit sites like EzineArticles.com to get ideas. Track down sites that already exist and see what information they offer for free. Then you can create a relatively short report that saves people the trouble of doing the research on their own.
You can hire somebody to write your report, or you can summarize existing material in your own words. About 10-15 pages should do it.
Once you have your report, you can sell it for a low price, maybe something like $7. Most people will be willing to part with that kind of money, since it’s
almost as much as they spend on coffee or sodas in a typical day.
The next trick is to drive some traffic to your website where you sell your report. The easiest free way to do that is to write an article and get it
accepted at EzineArticles.com. Target a keyword that gets okay traffic, but doesn’t have a lot competition.
I’ve never run across ANYONE who couldn’t use that approach to get started. There’s no guarantee you’ll succeed, but it’s a quick process you can keep
hammering on until you find a winner.
Here are some niches that have been popular (and profitable) for years:
- Personal development stuff, like boosting your self esteem
- Relationship topics, like improving your dating life or marriage
- Debt or credit-related topics, especially with the economy doing so bad
- Health topics, like curing acne or fixing back pain
The list could go on. All you have to do is find a niche that’s not as cutthroat as Internet marketing. Odds are good that people in those other niches are
even more eager buyers than in the Internet Marketing space.
The challenge is standing out from the crowd, so here are
a few simple ideas:
- Talk about a NEW topic. If there’s a new social networking site out there, for example, write a report about how to use it. New information sells great.
- Present your product in a unique way. That could be doing videos when everybody else does ebooks, for example, or offering overwhelming value that nobody else does.
- Offer help to buyers. Lots of people sell Internet Marketing products and then abandon buyers to figure everything out. Simply offering email support for a small fee and a limited time can make you stand out.
- Offer stuff that works. Not so hard, right? The market is full of junk that makes money but doesn’t live up to its promises.
And one more piece of advice for standing out…social proof counts most of all. So give your product away to some limited number of people and ask them for honest feedback. That will help your sales presentation be more genuine and more likely to sell.
As far as building a website or blog… I can understand when anybody says they’re a bit afraid of the technology of online business. But there’s really nothing to be afraid of.
The first thing to keep in mind is that your website can and should be very simple. You’ll need a page to present your product, a way for people to buy, and a page to deliver the product. That’s it. Three pages can do the job just fine. Want a very inexpensive solution…Visit WEBDESIGN.
You might want more than that, but that’s fine to start with.
The second thing to keep in mind is that you need to find a good tutorial about how to build simple sites. Frankly, I thought there wasn’t a really good one out there, so I created my own: MiniSite Profits
It doesn’t cost a dime, so feel free to sign up for your copy and put it use. The video course walks you through everything you need to know to set up your own mini-site, which is a simple site to sell a single product.
Give it a shot.. When all this works, you’ll be on top of the world.. Being self sufficient is a great feeling.
Compliments of Michael Rasmussan and Self Equity Solutions..
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