Most Internet Marketers fail online because they do not know where their business is going or how they are going to get there (to whatever their end point goal is – usually making money online). Many newbie Internet Marketers may experience a little success at first, but eventually they will fail. They will fail because they do not have or use a solid business plan in the development of their online business. Most people just starting out in Internet Marketing treat this business as a “hobby.” It is something they do in their spare time.
Most of these online entrepreneurs run after the hype and eventually close down their online business. This is almost always due to the lack of sales. They thought it would be “easy” to get sales online. The ideas behind these websites were great, but the people who conceived the idea failed to see the potential of the business venture.
To build a solid online business you need to think like a business owner. You are only going to turn your creativity into money by using the resources that are available to you. Whenever you are faced with a challenge in your online business, you should devote time to plan and analyze a strategy to overcome the challenge and succeed. 90% of the people who are investing in business ventures do not do this – and it leads to their failure!
One way I found that will help you plan the content for your website is by using what is called a “10×10 matrix.”
10×10 matrix
Open up a new excel file and brainstorm 10 things that you are passionate about. Write these 10 things in the first row – going across the top. These things would be the ones you would do for free and enjoy doing it. Your day job may be that of an office manager but you love vintage cars. Over the years you have learned a lot about vintage cars through magazines, videos and real life experiences. People come to you and ask for your advice on the subject of vintage cars. You really know a lot about vintage cars and you could talk nonstop for hours if provided the opportunity. You may know how to buy vintage cars and you are able to advise others on what vintage cars to choose that will suit their style.
Or you may be an avid golfer. If that is the case, then you need to write down 10 things that you can teach others on how to improve their golf game under the cell “golf.”
These things should be short like “warming up”; “driving range” (start with the wedge and move backward to the driver, with 10 shots each); there is the “sand bunker practice”; there is “chipping”,there is “putting”; there is staying cool in hot environments etc.
Write 10 things UNDER each main subject you wrote in the cells on the first row at the top. Some categories may not have 10 things you can think of and some may have more than 10.
Now that you have brainstormed a lot of potential topics, you need to see if these topics are being used in search engines on the Internet. You do not want to create content that no one reads about!
You can use Google keyword planner to see the list of related keywords in your niche. You can also see the amount the advertisers are paying for a particular keyword.
If you are creating a blog with the articles related to the keywords, you can use Ad-sense ads in your articles. This will allow you the possibility to make money from each blog post! You will need to build a website to do that (and that requires a small financial investment as well).
Use each sub-category to write an article and post that article to your blog site. Combine all of the sub-categories that you have turned into articles into an e-book that you can offer for sale or use it in a Give Away to build your email list. The possibilities are endless!
If you are not good at writing articles but you enjoy creating videos – use video blogging! You can create a YouTube channel and upload you videos to this channel. You can directly monetize your videos on YouTube. Once you have sufficient subscribers, you can ask for donations or provide premium content for a fee on your channel.
If you like to write articles then you can create an e-Book containing premium content and sell it on your website. I would recommend you use a merchant account from Click-Bank. Click-Bank is an online retail outlet that showcases over 10,000 digital products from vendors around the globe. More than 100,000 active affiliates promote the products of the vendors for commissions.
It is possible that you could receive a lot of sales within a short span of time. To do this, you need to encourage your affiliates to promote your product by providing them various promotional materials which they can use that are related to your product.
Remember to make your business scalable because you will get a lot of customers who are willing to buy more products from you in the future. So you will be building your list while making money! The best of both worlds!
You can even create Joint Ventures with some of the other marketers and make even more money selling your products in the future. Joint Ventures take many forms, such as Give Away events or just emailing a promotion from your JV partner to your list and they mail their list about your product.
You should always create a business plan based on facts and figures. You need to track and modify your campaigns continuously to stay ahead in this very fluid and very competitive business. Do not treat this as a hobby or your will only have a hobby. You can only have a business if you treat this “as a business.”