IT sounds like an idyllic life - you set up an online business, put your feet up on the desk and wait for the dollars to roll in. So is it really that easy to make money online?
Well yes. And no. Really, 'it depends' would have to be my answer.
Having created online businesses for myself and hundreds of business owners in New Zealand, the UK and Australia since 2000, and having had the pleasure of interviewing many highly successful online business owners via our bi-monthly Web Wednesday events, I've seen and experienced first hand that it is indeed possible to make money online. The question should actually be how much money, how soon, and how easily?
The importance of R n D
It still amazes me how many people I meet who set out to make money online before doing any real research other than a bit of 'Googling around'. One should also consider whether they could simply 'buy' a similar online business from an off the shelf place such as flippa.com.
If you've established that there is indeed a gap in the market (and there may be some need for some professional assistance here), it is then wise to investigate how much traffic your website is likely to get. You can do this by using simple tools like Google's keyword tool athttps://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool or more complex professional paid software.
A game of percentages
Once you have some indications of how many people may search words related to the proposed product or service you will offer on your site, you need to work out how to strategically prepare a website/online business with the research very much in mind that will give the site the best chance of attracting the traffic.
Whilst you will have key marketing messages to get across, search engines index pages, not websites, so it is important to prepare pages specifically aimed at reeling in keyword searchers to your website lair.
Once you are getting traffic, it becomes a game of percentages. Within the industry we generally say that if 1-2% of all traffic on your website are purchasing the product on offer, this is a good conversion rate. Naturally some websites perform better and others perform worse, but knowing this figure may help you with some forecasting before you even get going.
But how do you actually make money online?
Well just like offline, there are many ways to make money in business online.
You could sell advertising on your website; be it display ads or affiliate ads whereby you make a commission on each item sold as a result of traffic generated via your website. But you have to have serious traffic going through your site for this to work.
You could sell products online. It could be stuff you've created or you can of course sell other people stuff. You can stock it, or you can even do what is known as drop-shipping, which is where you sell an item that is warehoused elsewhere, and if a sale is generated it triggers the warehouse to post the item. Great if you are doing serious volume or selling large items.
You could come up with a new idea, a new way of doing things. Something that solves people's problems. And people may be prepared to pay a subscription for the service.
Whatever your way of making money is online, just like offline business, no matter how good your product or service is, you need to market it well, or no one will even know you exist. And marketing well online, my friend, is a whole new chapter in this ongoing digital story.
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/can-you-really-make-money-online/1644947/
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