It’s incredibly important to know what direction you want to head in when creating your internet business income system. I’ve been building online sites for over 8 years and I still follow my own set of guidelines when I start out. Taking the time now to map out your business will save you lots of headaches in the future.
Here are the questions I use whenever I take on a new project. Write them down so you can create you own business plan!
* Choose what business model you want to focus on. Are you interested in selling your own products that you have on hand, someone else’s products as an affiliate who earns commissions on sales, selling goods on eBay, drop shipping, writing and distributing your own ebook, re-selling ebooks or software, using Google Adsense on an informational site, offer your services instead of a product, etc.
* How much money do you have to invest in creating the site? Some models are very basic and will only cost you about $30.00 dollars to start. How much time can you devote to learning everything you need to get started?
* How much money do you want to invest in advertising and marketing? You can reasonably expect to pay $100.00 per month or more for time saving tools. You’ll want to know what your monthly budget can be because the more you outsource the more time you have to build more businesses.
* Are you good at writing “copy” for your marketing pieces or blog posts? Writing your own content saves you money but it is a huge time commitment on your part. You can outsource this but I would recommend doing it yourself to begin with so that you actually learn how do to it.
* Accepting credit cards on your site is a must if you are selling your own products. If you are selling on eBay you will need a PayPal account and process your transactions through them. They are fantastic and easy to use so sign up for a PayPal account. Even if you are selling your own products not on eBay, I still like PayPal but check out some of the others too like Google Checkout, 2Checkout, Authorize.net etc.
* How much are you going to charge? What is your competition doing? What kind of services are they offering? You’ll need to know what your market is and what your competition is doing. Now what sets you apart from them? Do you offer a better product with a better guarantee or something? Do you ship for free or have a coupon that beats out your competitors? What is your unique selling proposition?
* Do you have additional products that your buyers would be interested in? The majority of people who have already purchased something from you and trust you will buy again from you so you’ll want to have or create something related to your original product that will help them later. Market this follow up product to your existing customer base.
* What kind of residual income can you build in addition to your product sites that could be run automatically with you not there. Think of selling an ebook. You create a site, add your content and sell the ebook all online. You use PayPal to process your payments and the ebook is automatically downloaded for your customer. You do nothing. If you create many of these types of auto pilot sites you can earn income and have time for other projects!
* Who can you interview for free (think video or audio) that is an expert or celebrity that you can use as an endorsement for your product or company? You can record an interview and then market it for free using YouTube. This is a huge way to build credibility for you and get your name out there.
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