Have You Lost Your Online Bussiness?

Have a look at this question I just received from my facebook page:

If you had to do it all over again, starting today, with your current knowledge, but with no established website and not even one name collected, what would you do?

The person who sent that question also shared with me that he had spent thousands on Internet marketing material, from SEO stuff to list building material.

Well, that is a GREAT question, so I decided to answer it for everyone...

I am going to tell you about a business plan that is almost a "can't miss". It won't buy you a Ferrari overnight, but if you follow it you will end up with a very solid business. And you might get that Ferrari... eventually.

And this isn't theory - this is a business model that every successful internet marketer have used (and I have friends who have used it) in all kinds of different markets. Everything from hobbies, to humor, to "how to", to "make money online", to professional services... on and on.

Let me call this business a "content site"... but I really need to come up with a more clever name. In any case, let's walk through the basic steps.

1. Pick a niche or topic. Hopefully you have one. If you don't, I can't tell you how to pick one right now... but maybe in a future newsletter.

2. Pick a domain name and put up a website. This doesn't have to be complex. In my next blog i will point out some site that will give you some help if you are a newbie.

3. Start publishing good, solid content about that niche on the website. Why? Because content brings search engine traffic, links from other sites, and word of mouth traffic. These days, the quickest and easiest way to do put up content on your site is with a blog. Blogging software can be very cheap (ie, free) and easy to set up.

4. Continue to add additional content to your site - at least on a weekly basis. Write additional articles on the niche and submit them to article directories. This will keep the search engine spiders coming back, and will get you more traffic and links.

5. Start building an opt-in list from day one. Do this by encouraging visitors to your site to join your opt-in list... in other words, "sell the opt-in". Publish to that list on a regular basis. Send them good content without a bunch of ads. Encourage feedback, try to create a dialog with your readers.

6. Send a survey to your email list asking them what they want to know. Use their answers to come up with a list of potential products to sell them. You can even run a second survey, giving them a short list of the potential products and asking for their favorite.

7. Create a product based on the feedback from your readers... and then sell it to them.

8. Keep your empire growing - continue to add content, continue to publish to your email list, continue to solicit feedback and comments from your readers. Continue to sell them the products that they tell you they want.

9. Sit back and enjoy your business and the rewards it brings you. :-)

Now obviously, that is an extremely condensed version. There is simply no way to lay out every detail in this blog. But don't be fooled into thinking that this plan is too simple to work.

It has been working for years, and it will continue to work. And it will build a real asset... a web business that will continue to throw off cash for years to come.

This isn't a plan for a one-hit-wonder, or a flash-in-the-pan that will be gone from the search engines in a couple of months.

The only real problem is that it does require work. This isn't the type of thing where you can take a $97.00 piece of software and have it build your business for you.

But if you want a real, sustainable business... well, take a close look at that plan.