What Does it Take to Make a Profitable Business Online in 2018?
How can you make your online business prosper and profit off today and in days to come?
Sounds like a cliche, right?
But in experts’ opinion if you are into serious infopreneurship, it is the only question you need to be able to answer at all for yourself, period! keep asking this question yourself all along your Journey of Enterpreneurship, get to know the right answer and you are good to go. Getting to know the answer to this singlemost question everytime when in doubt, will help you make wise and productive decisions and help you position on fast lane of the growth trajectory.
So,what are the key ingredient to a sustainable, successful and profitable online business?
Like every Brick and Mortar businesses out there, the online businesses too run on five pillars: Value, User Experience (UX), Trust, Relationship and Profit of course. The pillars are not independent from each other they are rather, at interdependence. You cannot take out any of the ingredients and still expect the desired result.
While the first four pillars: Value, User Experience, Trust, and Relationship form the basis of sustainability of your business, the fifth one, the Profit is the consequential effect. The first four are your customer centric endeavour in which you ought to outshine your competitors. And once you excel on the four counts, ingredient mix of four is bound to result in Profit which is the entrepreneur centric benefit, a reward you always aspire for.
Alphabetic order places G before T which in essence is indicative of the fact that, GIVE should come well before TAKE. When there is no giving, there should absolutely be no expectation of taking, that’s it! This amply clarifies the fact that if you are lacking in your entrepreneurial reward, there must exist lacking in your giving out.
What’s new in this, the Concept is already an age old principle?
Yeah age old, but it simply means proven! The only twist is that, are you excelling on the giving front. Which again means one simple thing: are you leveraging power of cutting age technology, tools and resources?
Principles are principles, they work even in a state of your ignorance. They need not be changed; only to be augmented to the best of your advantage. The Law of Gravitation was already there before it was discovered by Newton. The only thing Newton did that he formulated the principle using some numbers and symbols. You can do the same thing once having known the principle.
Since the inception of human civilization, it is known that any vehicle moves faster when it is on rounded wheels, so why to re-invent the shape of wheel instead applying the same to action. Why to make the wheels square shaped, why not to make the wheel perfectly round?
How is money made online: Let’s take a peep into!
Making fortune off your online business goes like this:
#Product/service + web Traffic = Sales;
#Sustainable repeat sales = Profit;
#Sustainable repeat profits = True fortune
The equation of making fortunes involves four variables: A product or Service, Traffic, Sales and Sustainability. A few sales may not get you the profit but if you create sustainability in sales the Profit will come into picture and in turn, if you create sustainable profit, this will lead you making fortunes. So creating a business model that would last long on web is something imperative for you.
You can create sustainability or Long time presence on web if you deliver value to your audience, provide them a good user experience, build relationship with them and win their trust in the process of dealing with them. Make use of what is working, find a mentor, be in a learning mode, employ cutting age tools, commit to yourself to stick with a mentor, walk your talk instead being hypocrite, stay ahead of the pack and that is it; you are on your way to create sustainability in your online business.
When I started looking into web entrepreneurship, I thought it was kind of a hit and run game i.e, bring the traffic to your product/services, let the customer buy from you, stuff your pocket and that’s all. The perception of yours may not resemble with that of my initial days. But in any case, committing to create a long term presence is what a web entrepreneurship is all about. It is not about limiting your stretch of imagination, it is about making a real fortune and giving back to society.
1.Choosing a Product/Service : May be Your Own, May Be Others’
Obviously You will want to go for a product, for which there is already a market, that is people are looking for that. But how would you get to know about that.
Brainstorm the ideas based on your interest, hobbies or likings and see their search trends on Google trends. For a professional success you will want to have a Keyword Research Tool at your disposal. Google Keyword Planner was a great free keyword tool until recently when it suddenly started showing weird results.
To reach pinnacle of success in web entrepreneur space you have to have your own product/services, because only in that case you will be able to enjoy major chunk of profit after any sale that happens but this is not all you require while starting off. There are heck lot of examples where the web marketers or internet marketers have made bigger fortunes than the product/ service creators out there.
2.Getting Traffic :Getting Visitors: Getting Footfalls: Getting Eyeballs
Please be clear from the very outset, Traffic does not mean just any traffic. The traffic for sales to be realised, requires a targeted traffic, if not laser targeted. Please don’t be mistaken that only buying any traffic will get you the sales. When experts say: you require a targeted traffic not just any traffic what does this mean: If your product/Service is visible to the people actually searching for your products or any other product in same market category (Niche) as yours, you are getting targeted traffic. So, in essence, for you getting traffic means placing your product or services right before the eyeballs searching for a solution that your products or services can provide them.
Organic and Paid Traffic: Depending upon the manner how you get the traffic, the traffic is either organic traffic or paid traffic. If you create a blog post or article around your product or services and that ranks in the search engines for certain search queries, people will visit your blogsite or website simply meaning that you are getting organic traffic. On the other hand, if you pay certain amount of money to Search Engines or other traffic sources for your product to be shown for search queries the traffic is a paid traffic.
So, the organic traffic is had by virtue of quality of your blogs or articles, where quality of your blogs and articles have to outstand thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of articles and posts on web. This requires outstanding on almost 200 parameters set by Search Engines. The process of ranking your content thus requires learning some skills called SEO on your part. The Learning SEO skill is a gradual process, nobody can master it overnight and further it requires onward learning with every update brought in by the Search Engines.
The paid traffic is received when you spend money on advertisement, may be with Google, Bing, Yahoo or with any other website already getting high traffic. It is fast, you can start getting paid traffic almost immediately after setting your ad campaigns with traffic providers. It is scalable, means you can get tons of paid traffic by expanding your budgets. But it can siphon off your bank account if not done meticulously.
How to get Targeted traffic: A must for sale to happen
Organic traffic is a great source of targeted traffic but to get that you will be required to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques and master them eventually. You will be applying SEO techniques on your own blogs or websites and get them ranked in Search Engines for search queries related to your product/services. The process requires you to set up a website, writing content, and adding videos in the manner Search Engines Like. The ranking basically requires you to dominate in a particular market segment (Niche) and establishing authority. The growth curve may take any longer between 2 to 5 years on an individual effort.
Paid traffic are not always targeted traffic, You could buy paid traffic from major search engines viz. Google, Bing, Yahoo and many other websites out there on web but you are required to learn how to buy the targeted traffic and master the art eventually. The learning curve is usually much shorter than that of Organic Traffic. It is imperative, you be cautious opening your purse to anybody promising cheap targeted traffic. There are scamsters all around web who lure naive people to buy paid traffic from them claiming that they sell super targeted traffic.
Which Traffic You should Master?
Both sort of traffic have their own merit and demerits. While you straightway get targeted traffic from organic traffic to your website. It is pretty much time consuming affair with changes and updates in Googles ranking algorithm. Practically its becoming harder with each passing day. Gone are the days when people just threw in websites of a few pages with good Keywords and balm; the site would be ranking within days. As of now, when everyday a million websites are getting live on web it is not a joke to rank your website, get seen and get a traffic. Simultaneously organic traffic is not a scalable idea. What the great thing about organic traffic is that, you do apply every skill on your own property i.e, a website which eventually turns out to be a great asset future. Down the lines, you can sell your website at a price almost 12 to 20 times of the monthly income your website is generating. So far as paid traffic is concerned it is quite necessary that you learn how to buy laser targeted traffic, it is fast, scalable, big fortune creator but without mastering the art you could literally lose your shirt. It is advisable you learn the basics under some mentor with a social proof. If by any means you get an offer of something free of cost, It simply means it is either superficial or it just doesn’t work.
In a nutshell, you can go either way, none is easier, none is harder but start with one and gradually learn getting both traffic. In my personal opinion, if you just starting off, start with making your own website, learn some basic SEO skills of getting organic traffic, then turn to paid traffic mastery and dominate.
Is the organic traffic purely a free traffic:
Please note that there is no free traffic as such, the traffic you get through SEO methods, do not cost you significant amount of money but it costs you significant time. And you know time is money!
3.Making Sales: To Make a Profit and a Fortune Subsequently :
So one thing is sure, you got to get a targeted traffic for sales to take place. Technically, in web space this sale thing is called a conversion. The more conversion is more sales, more sales more profit, continuous profit bigger fortune as simple as that. So the conversion is your aim you would aspire for making your profits higher and higher. Rate of conversion is the % of traffic turning into your customers.
Making fortunes: making big bucks, i.e, to say six figure onwards is dependent on many factors; especially the prominent ones already discussed about. To make a fortune you will require a sustainable model of online business and for sustainability you require to give you best on four pillars: Value, User Experience, Trust and Relationship.
Basically you can do your online business on two ways: The Hit & Run model and Long Term Relationship model. Bring traffic to your product, let the sale take place and you forget about your buyers. This is what I call a Hit&Run model.
The long term relationship model works other way around. You keep the contacts (basically email)of your buyers and non-buyers, commit to keep their privacy secured, you are always up to answer their queries, clear their doubts, you mail them periodically to let them know what is latest in their requirement, and you always think keeping yourself in their shoes, make them trust you and you make them your repeat customers.
You will always want your business model on long term relationship based and creating your own audience, technically called tribe.
Higher Conversion:
conversion is dependent of the value you offer at front end and the user experience the visitor gets on your landing pages.
The greater value you offer, the more chances are there to convert the traffic into sales.
The message of you landing page should be carrying utmost clarity. At the first sight it should appear that you are selling something worth for which the visitor is dying for.
The testimonials you provide on Landing page/sales page should be a verifiable fact.
The design of a landing page should a clean and elegant.
The call to action on landing/sales page must not be a pushy one. Instead the message and the authenticity of the testimonial should drive the visitor to take action.
Its been a proven fact that conversion are greater in the cases when you offer something worth for free. Technically, this is called a lead magnet. Lead magnets are great ideas to get the emails of visitors.
Intent sensitive optin forms on your website and funnels made out of clickfunnels have proven cutting age tools for you.
4. Creating a Sustainable Successful Business Online:
Value: Make sure you provide your customer something that outstands the crowd, it is something that fills the gap in the market. It is apparent value that helps decide the visitor on your landing page for making a buying decision. Todays’ customers are more informed and so you just cannot think of a brainwash or an eyewash sort of gimmicks. At the very front end you could use a lead magnet such as free training videos, a free e-book, a free report etc. to give a glimpse of what actually you have in store for your customer. As per a research on Customer life cycle, majority of customers buy from you on seventh follow up.
One thing to be very sure about, that landing page could be your product review page, an article, a video or anything that has an intent to sell something. It is not always a flashy video. But yes, by far it is proven that an ideal landing page should be one which has a pre-built optin form or squeeze page followed by a sales page. Not only that before getting the visitor to actual sales page you should consider a series of value added pages. These days it is working so fine.
The reason behind creating such a sales funnel is that even the customer does buy not from you on his first visit to you landing page, for whatever reasons, financial or psychological, you could be able to follow up the customers by delivering a value laden emails direct into their inbox.
Benefit of employing a sales funnel comprising of an OPTIN FORM and a SALES PAGE is that you can maximise your profit on investment of buying the traffic which in long run help you sustain your business.
Trust: The customer shoots you an email and you clear his doubts and queries. This helps you win his/her trust. If you reply like this “hey I will be more than glad to help you out, if anything pops up in your mind just don’t hesitate to clear it up with me’..Can you imagine how cool and elated he will feel?
If you find unable to satisfy the queries and doubts of your potential customers, don’t stop there, take help of your mentor and simply pass on the message to your customer that you are taking help of your mentor. Just be honest to your customers. Don’t pretend to be smart, instead practice to be one!
If you promise something, do your best to keep that. Don’t over promise. Overpromising and under deliverance are just fatal. Be fair in transactions, if possible avoid doing any of such kind except the one you have kept officially open for everybody else. Try to stand to the commitments especially time commitments, if not possible just communicate. Walk your talk, don’t be different persons on screen and off screens. People love transparency and no-hypocrisy. These steps help you create a rock-solid trust with your customers and in long run add to the sustainability of your business.
Relationship: Your value studded communication with customer/potential customer down the line helps you develop a good rapport with your subscriber who is also a potential Customer and this helps him making buying decision which all the way leads up to your sustainability and ultimate profit. The established relationship makes your subscriber a repeat customer.
Don’t ever try to enter the personal life of your customer until and unless solicited. Even in the event of solicitation is there in place, think twice before tendering an advice or passing a judgement. Avoid entering personal spheres at all cost. Yes, you got to be up and ready to give your honest and unbiased opinion in professional sphere.
User experience(UX): At the front end the user experience is only a part of whole user experience you should be actually taking care of. If the message at front end you offer is of great value, the design and navigation of the site or landing page is superb but the product/service you sell is of inferior quality, the feedback will be deprecated one and that may result in into refund like situation and in the long run you could miss a great long term customer.
So this user experience has bearing on overall customer experience right from your message or promise on landing page, look and feel of your landing page/website to the content and quality of your product and services. Thus it becomes imperative on your part to not deal with substandard products/services. The other way around if you choose to pick great message, a great landing page and a great product and service this will only add to your sustainability. Here is some other great tip for creatingan awesome user experience (UX)
Don’t complicate you message across audience, people love simple and effective messages.
Don’t hype because the hype simply creates a repulsion, kind of reaction customers today like to stay away.
Don’t be repetitive it just gets the audience bored, yes no body in this world has time to read circumlocutions. Give your messages in fewer possible words.
Don’t be pushy in applying CALL to ACTION, let the customer decide. Educating the customers is ok, but being pushy simply creates a fishy smell.
Don’t be an I/we centric, put yourself in customers’ shoes and then decide the message, content or promo. Practice being ‘you’ centric, the earlier you master the faster you grow.
Role of Mentor,tools and resources: For Sustainable and Profitable Business
A mentor: If You have not come across this amazing message until today, here is this paraphrased: “Decide what you want to do and then find somebody who is very successful doing that, hold his hand and implore him to make you his disciple” …Every successful person in this world attributes his success greatly to his/her mentor. At first instance, may be this looks too trivial to you but this message alone provides for making your learning curve extremely small and winning you the race. I am a staunch believer of this philosophy. Finding a true mentor could be tough job but once done you are almost done.It is the mentor who helps you outstand the competition by adding his invaluable experience to you knowledge base.
Use what is working: Tools used years back are outdated now, sometimes not needed too, innovations have replaced them with more advanced ones and more easy to go with. The tools are out there to simplify for your hassles, eliminate the human element as far as practicable and get your business working in your sleep too. Here is the list of tools the marketing experts are using in their everyday online business and marketing.
Learn what is Trending and fresh: If you donot have the resources at your disposal which are fresh and trending you may just be wasting you time and money. Resources could be in any form, may be its the community of like minded entrepreneurs headed by a mentor with proven records or it may be just a book in your hand. Whatever be the means it should have quality incorporating the trends, must be worth read and worth your time .There is no dearth of scraps all around.
In fact, sustainability of an online business cannot become a reality without underscoring the importance of a mentor, cutting age tools and great learning resources. These all together make the success principle in true working. Better armed with tools, better equipped with resources and better guided by a mentor makes your battle of infopreneurship half won and positions you on a fast lane of growth.
Above all, ask a successful infopreneur about his real breakthrough and he will sure attribute the same to a mentor behind him who has sailed him through all the turns, twists,waves and trends making things work for him.