First, I must say that you cannot make money online
exclusively. The Internet is a platform for making money. You can’t just come
online and start making money by clicking and messaging. Even fraudsters online
use the internet as their bait to get the greedy into shady deals. Whatever
product or service you can offer, online will help you magnify it and give you
a wider reach.
Let me share Carolyn Sun 5 basic money making online knowledge
with you.
1. Spend time getting feedback on what you’re selling before
launching.
Don’t rely on affirmation from friends and family to
validate that you have a unique and salable product or service. Chances are,
these people are emotionally attached to you, and they’re more likely to think
every idea you share is the greatest thing since Nutella. Getting feedback from
people who are emotionally attached to you is a “disaster from the start,” says
Adam Callinan, founder of BottleKeeper.
Get market validation from potential customers who aren’t in
your social circle. Some entrepreneurs use the “will they pull out their
wallet” test before investing money in a business. Callinan, who’d come up with
a prototype for an individual beer bottle cooler, ran a crowdfunding campaign
on Fundable to gauge pre-orders for his product. His campaign raised nearly
$14,000, 280 percent of his $5,000 goal.
Besides Fundable, there are a number of crowdfunding
platforms to choose from including Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Rockethub.
Other ways to get people’s feedback, says Sujan Patel,
vice-president of Marketing at When I Work, is using customer insight survey
tools, such as Qualaroo and Client Heartbeat. If you’re just starting out,
surveys are a chance to find out what the customer is hoping the
product/service will solve or do for him or her. If you’re already in business,
surveys can ask how the customer found out about the product or service,
whether the customer is willing to be a return customer and why.
Or if you’re in a job in the industry you plan on starting a
business in, get feedback from the people at your job -- your manager and
clients -- says Steve Tobak, founder of Invisor Consulting.
2. Have a website.
You must have a website, says Joel Widmer, founder of Fluxe
Digital Marketing. Not only for the obvious -- to have something to refer
customers back to -- but having a website builds your brand’s digital
footprint. Keep your site simple and copy-driven with opportunities for email
captures on every page.
Three easy steps to having your own website to sell products
without spending a lot of cash are:
1)
Select a content management system (CMS), such
as WordPress, which is popular for its user friendliness and is free.
2)
Register a domain name and subscribe to a
hosting service, such as GoDaddy or Bluehost.
3)
Customize your CMS with ecommerce-enabling
plugins and themes. WooCommerce offers free ecommerce themes for WordPress,
such as Storefront. Also, WP eCommerce and MarketPress are additional free
ecommerce plugin options.
Or for anyone setting up an e-commerce site,
both Shopify and Squarespace are easy e-commerce platforms that allow you to
build an e-commerce site yourself.
3. Know your competition and customers.
Study up on both competitor and complementary brands (i.e.
if you are selling a fire alarm, then look for “house safety” websites). Widmer
says your customers will be hanging out on websites for both competitor and complementary
brands. He recommends using search tools such as SimilarWeb and Google’s
related-search results (located at the bottom of every Google search) to see
what sites your prospective customer may be visiting.
Other free research tools to get to know your market,
suggests Brandon Schaefer, CEO of MyVirtualSalesForce, are LinkedIn (to see who
competitor brands are connecting with and what types of updates they're
posting), Google Alerts (for brand mentions and keywords) and Google Trends.
4. Create an action plan for sales and marketing.
To earn your first million in sales, says Patel, work
backwards and put a number on what it takes in monthly revenue to get to a
million your first year -- meaning how many units, subscriptions or services
must be sold. Create benchmarks to reach. Even if you don’t reach them, you
have a blueprint.
One way to reach your goal is to figure out which marketing
avenues to leverage. Given the wealth of social-media possibilities, start with
one or two social-media outlets where you know your audience is. In general,
for new products the best channels are Facebook and Pinterest, says Widmer. For
expertise and services, try LinkedIn.
Also, two effective and free marketing strategies are
blogging on your own site and guest blogging on complementary sites. This
strategy helps build content and a digital footprint for your brand, says
Widmer. For guidance on what hot topics to blog about, Buzzsumo, a free web
service, allows you to input any domain or topic and get a list of the 10 most
popular related posts at the moment. It can also inform you of what popular
sites to hit up for guest blogging.
Should you guest blog, use the opportunity to lead users
back to your site and capture emails, says Widmer. One way to do so is to use a
“call to action” -- where you offer the reader something of value, such as a
free how-to eBook or a must-have checklist -- that the user can get or download
by going back to your website and providing an email address.
Some other marketing tools? The free KingSumo app allows you
to capture email subscribers through giveaways; Facebook Ads start at $1; and
the e-newsletter tool MailChimp has a free option and is drag-and-drop easy.
5. Do as much yourself as you can.
The DIY mentality will usually save you money if your budget
is limited. Also, it allows you to control the process and brand, explains
Callinan, who built his ecommerce site from scratch by talking to others who’d
already done ecommerce sites successfully. Don't farm out jobs you can do
yourself, especially in the beginning.
If you need a one-on-one coaching on how you can do business
online or become a strong entrepreneurs working from home contact Austin Imoru
(08184674107) and he will help you set up you online money making platforms.
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