If you are interested in building a sustainable and ethical business business that generates a nice income for you there are going to be four important steps that you are going to need to follow build an online business.
These steps…
- are not difficult
- are not technical
- work in any niche
- and anybody can do it.
We’re not going to be focusing on any of the gimmicks that you see being sold online and we’re not going to be talking about methods to build an online business that tell you can earn several hundred dollars by doing random push button things or uploading videos to YouTube that aren’t yours.
We’re actually going to focus on things…
- that work,
- that you have control of,
- that you own,
- that you can grow,
- and that you can do as simply as possible.
So, there are four steps…
Step 1 – Focus On Building An Audience
The first step is you have to focus on building an audience and you do that by giving value before asking for any money.
Now there are various ways you can build an audience. You can run a website or a blog like this one where you provide valuable content on a regular basis. You could run a YouTube channel where you continually upload videos to YouTube that are value based. Maybe you prefer Twitter or maybe you prefer Facebook.
It really doesn’t matter. The key thing is you need to focus on building an audience and you need to do so without really focusing on getting money right away.
Once you become known as somebody in your niche that is knowledgeable, that is trustworthy, and that continually provides content that helps your ideal target customer, people are going to want to learn more.
Now when people are at this step that is when they are going to join your list which is step two.
Step 2 – Build An Email List
Now an easy way to build an email list is by providing something of value and offering that in exchange for somebody’s email address and or name. [SIDE NOTE: see our list buliding challenge here]
So as an example, you could create a pdf which outlines a strategy you have used to generate affiliate sales with a very small email list. Anybody that is an affiliate marketer, that wants to be an affiliate marketer, that sells products online, would potentially be interested in this.
And if these people have been consuming your content on your blog, on your YouTube channel and your social media accounts, when you tell them you have something like this that you’re going to give them for free they are going to be interested.
Keep in mind that if you put this in front of someone that doesn’t have a clue who you are the chances are even though the content might be valuable, they may not trust you enough to opt-in right now. That’s one of the reasons it’s important to build an audience (Step 1).
In order for people to get this gift we need to have a way to provide it so we need to create something like this which is an opt-in page, or a landing page, or a squeeze page. They’re basically the same thing. You’ve probably seen a million of them before. Some are good. Some are bad.
Here is an example of one that converts relatively well for me because it offers one thing, and it doesn’t confuse people with lots of pictures and testimonials and pop-ups etc. It’s very simple. if someone wants it they enter their email address and they’re automatically put on my list.
They come to a thank you page which is something like this where I thank them and congratulate them for making the decision. I tell them what’s coming into their inbox and just to let them know that if it doesn’t come they can contact me and then I just offer one of my paid offers.
But the main point is this…
People have consumed my content. I’ve told them that I’ve got something to offer so they’ve come here to try and get it. They’ve landed here and now they’re on my email list, so I’ve started to build a list.
The more people that I can get to this page the better and the more people that I can get to opt in the better.
Now if you don’t want to create a page like this then you can use a different process.
There are platforms out there such as Gumroad and you can create as many Gumroad accounts as you want. It’s completely free. I’ve got several Ggumroad accounts. Once you’ve created a Gumroad account and you’ve verified who you are, you’re going to go and want to basically fill out your profile and your payment settings and all of that stuff so if you ever do make a sale that you can get paid and all of that.
Here’s a free guide to help you get set-up on Gumroad
But the great thing about Gumroad is you can actually use this if you don’t want to create a website or a squeeze page. You can use this third-party platform to build a list for yourself.
Now, once your opt-in page is ready it’s time to share it.
You can share it on your website. You can share it on Twitter if you’re building a Twitter audience. You can share it on Facebook if you’re building an audience on Facebook. If you’ve started off with the first step correctly of building an audience then you will have people that follow you on Twitter or on Facebook or maybe consume the content on your website or subscribe to your YouTube channel.
So, you can get this in front of many targeted prospects.
Step 3- Engage With Your Email List
And once they click through and opt-in and they’ve got the case study, they’re going to consume the content. Now it should be good value content and help them move forward to achieve their goals, but you’ve now got them on your email list and once you have them on the email list it’s much easier to engage with people on mass because you can send people interesting emails that stand out.
Honestly speaking that is the difference maker in my opinion between people that succeed and people that struggle.
Anybody can follow directions and create something like this on a squeeze page or on Gumroad, but the really important thing is can you create and write emails that entertain, that engage, and that build on the trust that you already have. And that’s where people struggle because everybody just rushes things and wants to get the sale right away and it’s not difficult, but it does take practice to get better with emails.
And whereas most people are just hypey and salesy what you should really try to do is incorporate storytelling into your email. For example, there is this free resource you can check out. It’s called the American Film Institute and there’s a web page on there about movie quotes. Now you may or may not have seen these films. You may or may not like these movies. That doesn’t really matter but quotes are just one of many examples that you can leverage to write fun and interesting emails.
So, for example the first one “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”, from Gone With The Wind. This would make a great subject line for an email and where all of the other emails are saying “Open Now”, “It’s live”, “Buy This”, “Free”, “Discount”, etc. there’s your email that says, “I don’t give a damn”…
It stands out and then you have the quote there in italics at the top of the email and you can talk a little bit about the quote, where the quote comes from and then you can segue, and this is the trick, you segue into a marketing message.
For example, one of the biggest fears that people have is appearing on camera, but the thing is you shouldn’t care what people think. You know you’re being judged all of the time so fearing being judged is a waste of time. Once you can stop caring what people are thinking of you, especially internet trolls and people you’re never going to meet, you lose that element of fear, and you can kind of segue from this quote into a message of like just do it. Just get over your fear and then once you’ve done it a few times you’ll wonder why you ever worried make about making videos and you’ll just make more and more and be able to build your audience.
Marketing For The Sale
A second example. “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”, from The Godfather. If you’re trying to promote your own product or you’re selling an affiliate offer you can talk about The Godfather. Use this quote and then you can say, “Now I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse”, and then you can segue into a little bit of a spiel about the product you’re promoting and then link people to a bridge page, review page, or a sales page.
Another quote on the page is, “You talking to me taxi driver?” This is a great headline that you could use to introduce the concept of a customer avatar and once you’ve done your research and you understand your ideal target customer you can learn the language that that particular person speaks and then you can tailor your marketing to that particular person.
Here’s another one. “What a dump”. So, for example, maybe the sales page of a product that you’re promoting as an affiliate is quite ugly. It’s got bad copy. It’s not formatted correctly but you know the actual product is top value. You can use “What a dump” as the headline. Talk about how bad the sales page is but tell people to forget that because the actual product is actually a good value and if you already have the audience and if you have the trust, you’re going to get much better sales results and if you don’t that is something that you are going to build over time.
One last example. “Is it safe”. So, for example, there are certain things that people are worried about doing online. I sometimes use private label rights content and a lot of people are worried about using private label rights because they fear that duplicate content will actually give them a penalty and it’s not true. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are famous and big entertainment and news websites that use duplicate content all the time and they never get penalized. So is PLR safe? Yes, but to people that are uneducated on the topic they might think it’s not.
So again, you just have to think a little bit outside the box and segue into a marketing message and this is one of tons of ways that you can come up with interesting concepts for email.
And if you can build the audience, build the list, engage with the list then marketing and selling becomes the easy part as you build an online business.
