How to start and run a successful business

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The internet is full of information on how to start and run a successful business online. As a matter of fact, there are thousands of “Make money online schemes and scams” flowing around on the internet. A search on Google (or any favourite search engine of your choice) of phrases like “How to start online business, or how to make money online” will reveal tons of websites containing such information. But the question is, how many of such information are reliable? How many of the authors of such information are willing to tell you the real thing. A whole lots of the authors of such information are just out there to rip you of your hard earned money by selling one or two of their info product to you at exorbitant price.

I was scammed several times when I started, all because I was so desperate of making it big on the internet. I entered into online business with the mindset of “Get rich quick”.

Warning! “The get rich quick” internet programs are outright scams. Beware!

Permit me to share a little of my experience. When I was trying to learn how to start online business, I came across an indigenous internet guru that claimed to be a foreign agent with reps in my country. I blindly signed up for their affiliate program. Then I knew nothing about affiliate marketing, so I contacted him and explained my plight. Within a twinkle of an eye, he replied my message offering me an info product on how start an online business, making cool monthly income. The cost of the CD was $99.9. The only thing that prevented me from buying his CD was the means of payment. I was supposed to pay with credit card, which I had none.

Few days later I came across another reliable person that offer me the same information (in fact a better one) for less than $20.

Moral of the story: Don’t be desperate when you come into online business, or you’ll be scammed a thousand times. 

Time and space will not permit me to share all my experience here. To learn more about my experience on the internet, it may interest you to check misconception about making money online on my blog.

How Then Can One Start And Run A successful Online Business?

To become a guru in online business, you need to first learn the following basic concepts and skills:

1.      You Need To Learn How To Create The Platform: Money don’t grow on trees, you need a platform that will generate the money. Just as it is in the offline world, so it is in the online world, a platform is needed. By platform I mean a website or at least a blog. Creating a blog is not a difficult task. Thanks to Google, they have a free blogging platform that one can start with. How to create a blog is beyond the scope of this post. To learn how to create a blog, check this post: Click on me or better still contact the author of this blog for help.

2.      Content Creation: Having created your blog or website in step 1, you need to put contents. It is the content that will bring visitors to your site and the subsequent conversion of these visitors to prospects.

3.      Keyword Research: Before you create your contents you need to do research. You don’t just type into your site any idea that comes to mind and then think you’ve created content. No! It doesn’t work that way.  So what is keyword research?

I will just give a brief explanation here. Let’s assume you want to learn how to make money online, you are now in front of your computer ready to search the internet. What would you type into your favourite search engine? Let’s say you type in phrases like, “How to make money online, quick ways to make money online, work at home business”, etc. These search terms you used are called keywords.

So when you have an idea of an online business you want to implement you need to do keyword research using phrases related to your ideas. Are people searching for your ideas? If yes, then you are on a good path. If no, then consider changing your idea. If people are searching for your idea you also need to consider the search volume i.e. how many people are searching for it. Having done that, you also need to look at the competition. How many people have already established themselves in your niche idea? Can you beat the competition? If no, consider modifying your ideas. This does not mean you should drop your idea totally, but a little modification will do.

What do you need to do all of the above research? There are lots of them, some free and others requiring a paid subscription. My favourite in the list of the free ones is Google AdWords tool. I can’t exhaust tips on content creation in this post. More is on the way.

4.      Search Engine Optimization: These are steps you need to take to make your content appear probably on the first page of Search Engine Result Page (SERP). Keyword research we talked about in the preceding paragraph is one of such steps. There is more to search engine optimization but beyond the scope of this post.

5.      Capturing Leads and Building Leads: Having great contents in your site is the number one step to capturing leads. If your site is packed full of junks, nobody will visit let alone becoming a subscribers. If they accidentally find themselves there, they will hit the back button immediately. There’s more to capturing and building list also. We’ll talk about that in subsequent posts.

6.      Internet marketing and advertising: Having built a website/blog and you have also put great contents, your job is not finished yet. You need to attract a lot of visitors. Having great content and doing SEO will of course bring visitors, but that alone may not be enough. So you may need to pay money for advertising. This way you create awareness for your site. More adverts, more exposure, more subscribers list, more conversion, more money. It’s a chain reaction sort of.

7.      Basic web programming: A little knowledge of programming is essential. You don’t necessarily need to be a pro programmer before making it big online. But a basic knowledge is necessary.

This post was put together by guest author Alexander Ubokwe (the author of focusmoneymaking blog,  a blog dedicated to how to make money online, small business ideas and entrepreneurial ideas). He also authors another blog dedicated to relationship and healthy living tips (relationshipsuccess blog) 


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