5 Steps To A Successful Online Business

There are several ways to make money online but the best, long term way is to sell products, either your own or someone else's online. Any business that involves recruiting members to generate income and "get-rich-quick" type schemes is basically a scam. The only way to make a stable, ongoing income where your customers will buy regularly from you is to create your own business.

1. The first step to online business is deciding on a product or set of products to sell. There's no limit to what you can sell, you can choose one product, several products (a family of related products) or a large array of products (like a catalogue). Spend some time researching your favorite topics online, get an idea of the type of product and the size of your potential market. Is it something you'd like to sell?, because the internet is such a big place, there are people willing to buy just about anything.

2. Once you have determined what you are going to sell, you need a web site to sell it from, however you may initially choose to sell someone else's product. In that case, you will become their affiliate and be given a special affiliate link to their site so that you don't need a web site at all. The disadvantage of not having your own web site is that all of your prospective customers get funneled through the merchant's site, sure you get credited for the sale but it's only a one off. I don't know about you but what do you think will earn more money in the long term?, a one off front end sale from a customer you'll never see again, or several sales from that same customer who is now on your list and you can market to on a regular basis. If you are an affiliate, look at investing in your own web site, capture their email address with a squeeze page then recommend quality merchants products, that way you not only get the sale but the opportunity to continue selling to them for as long as they remain your subscriber.

3. Once you get to the stage of collecting email addresses through your web site or squeeze page, an auto responder becomes an indispensable tool in helping you keep in contact with your subscribers. Research shows that it takes an average of 7 follow-up letters to make a sale, that's why it's so important not to settle on a one-off, front end sale when it's by the 7th contact letter that your subscriber is more likely to purchase, see how much you'd be leaving on the table if you did not create your own list?

4. After you have set up the web site and auto responder, the next thing you need to do is send traffic to your site. There are many ways to do that, some more effective than others. Some that work particularly well are press releases, articles, classified ezine ads, and Joint Venture email partners. Test each method and see what works better for you. Bear in mind that any form of advertising you do will need to be tested and tweaked before it will become profitable.

5. In order to perfect your advertising once you have all of those things in place, you must track and test everything you do. You must know what forms of advertising you used, what worked, what did not, what needs minor or major adjustment to work. The more you test and improve, the more successful your business will be.

Remember everyone makes mistakes when first starting out. There is no perfect way to make money online, there are several ways, as time goes on you'll learn what suits your style and what works for you, once you get to that point, you scale it and duplicate more of what works, this is what makes a successful marketer.

Follow these steps and you'll be well on your way to a successful online business.