Most internet marketers fail online because they don’t know where their business is going or how they are going to get there (whatever their end goal, usually making money online). Many novice internet marketers may experience a bit of success at first, but will eventually fail. They will fail because they do not have or use a solid business plan in developing 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 go out of business online. This is almost always due to a lack of sales. They thought it would be “easy” to get sales online. The ideas behind these websites were great, but the people who came up with the idea didn’t see the potential for 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 using the resources that are available to you. Whenever you are faced with a challenge in your online business, you should spend time planning and analyzing a strategy to overcome the challenge and be successful. 90% of people who invest in business ventures don’t, and that leads to failure!
One way that I found that will help you plan your website content is by using what is called a “10×10 matrix.”
10×10 matrix
Open a new Excel file and brainstorm 10 things you are passionate about. Write these 10 things in the first row, at the top. These things would be what you would do for free and enjoy doing them. His day job may be that of an office manager, but he loves vintage cars. Over the years, you’ve learned a lot about vintage cars through magazines, videos, and real-life experiences. People come up 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 non-stop for hours if you had the chance. You may know how to buy vintage cars and can advise others on which vintage cars to choose that suit your style.
Or you may be an avid golfer. If that’s the case, then you should write down 10 things you can teach others about improving your golf game in the “golf” cell.
These things should be short like “warm up”; “driving range” (start with the wedge and back toward the driver, with 10 shots each); there is the “sand bunker practice”; there is “splintering”, there is “laying”; stays cool in hot environments, etc.
Write 10 things BELOW each main topic you wrote in the cells in 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’ve brainstormed a lot of potential topics, you need to see if these topics are being used by internet search engines. You don’t want to create content that no one reads about!
You can use the Google Keyword Planner to see the list of related keywords in your niche. You can also see how much advertisers are paying for a particular keyword.
If you are creating a blog with articles related to keywords, you can use Ad-sense ads in your articles. This will allow you to earn money from each blog post! You will need to create a website to do that (and that also requires a small financial investment).
Use each subcategory to write an article and publish it on your blog site. Combine all the subcategories that you have converted into articles into an e-book that you can offer for sale or use it as a gift to build your email list. The possibilities are endless!
If you are not good at writing articles but enjoy creating videos, use video blogging! You can create a YouTube channel and upload your videos to this channel. You can directly monetize your videos on YouTube. Once you have enough subscribers, you can request donations or provide premium content for a fee on your channel.
If you like to write articles, you can create an ebook with premium content and sell it on your website. I would recommend that you use a Click-Bank merchant account. Click-Bank is an online retail point of sale that showcases more than 10,000 digital products from suppliers around the world. Over 100,000 active affiliates promote vendor products for commissions.
You may receive a lot of sales in a short time. To do this, you need to encourage your affiliates to promote your product by providing them with various promotional materials that they can use related to your product.
Remember to make your business scalable because you will get many customers who will be 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 earn even more money selling their products in the future. Joint ventures take many forms, such as giveaway events or simply emailing a promotion from your JV partner to your list and they email their list about your product.
You should always create a business plan based on facts and figures. You need to continually track and modify your campaigns to stay ahead in this fluid and competitive business. Don’t treat this as a hobby or you will just have a hobby. You can only have a business if you treat it “like a business.”