MarketingSolutions.com

So, you have decided to venture into the Internet and try to tap into the vast amounts of wealth that is being made.  Before you decide to quit your day job, there are multiple things to know. 

First, it is pretty tough to make quick money on the internet unless you have money to spend on cost advertising, or you have your own product that you are selling.  So, plan on a possible long term project to get going if you are trying to build your own information site or are working with affiliates.

I recommend working on your Internet Business on the side in the beginning so that you maintain that income.  Obviously the more time you have to spend the better, so if you can work part time to pay your bills, or can work full time on your Internet business, the process can be quicker.

Multitasking will be one of the keys in your success online.  You will be responsible for various tasks like, design, writing, research, support, marketing and finances.  You could outsource some of these in the future, but for now, we are trying to start with little money. 

The first step will be to research the industry that you are trying to get into.  There are multiple keyword research tools out there to assist you.  Type “Keyword Suggestion” or “Keyword Tool” into a search engine and you will find a few options.  You can also read my articles on Keyword research.

The next step will be to make a categorized list of all of the various pages you want on your site like the Contact Us page, About Us, Privacy Statement, Disclaimers, etc.  You will need to write out the information for each one of these pages.  If you have a product site, you will need to write out the various categories of products or pages. You may have a page for Specials or New Products.  I recommend that you look at your competition to see what pages they have.  You may get some really good ideas off of them.

Next, you need to be able to build the site.  I recommend that you use either build it yourself with a free option online or spend the $200-1000 to have a designer build it for you.  Online programs that offer drag and drop options for creating a site are getting better and better, but the cost of web design is also going down.  I offer a section on this site for more information on Web Design options.  You also need to be aware of proper site setup for the search engines.  I recommend that you read my section on SEO tips and strategies.

You now need to understand the Marketing sides of things. A good amount of marketing online is free. It may be a little time consuming to get going, but it is still free.  You can read further into the free marketing by clicking the marketing category on the left.  It is good to understand what marketing you will be doing so that you can set up the site.

Now that you have an understanding of research, setup and marketing, you need to know how to handle those pesky customers!  Keeping track of your business will be extremely important for many reasons.  First, you need to be able to track sales for Tax and personal finance purposes.  Second, you will want to do marketing to your customers in the future. Keeping track of their information will be important.  For this, you can either use a simple spreadsheet program like Microsoft Office’s Excel.  You can also get a little more detailed and track the information in QuickBooks or one of the new programs moving up quickly in the search engines.

Keep backup copies of everything.  An external hard drive, flash drive or online backup company can keep a lot of headache from happening.  There are a few options online for Computer backup that allows you to simply push a button and it saves the information you choose to a Server on the Internet.  Trust me… Many people have worked days, weeks, even months and then lost all of the information.  Can you imagine working 300 hours over a few months and all of that information is lost in a matter of a couple wrong keystrokes or a crashed hard drive?  It isn’t good… Trust me! So… You are warned.

Best of luck!  We will see you on the road to Success!