Do you dream of owning your own profitable online business?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have total freedom with your time to do what you want and also to own a business that supports your ideal lifestyle?- Do you experience confusion about how to find leads and convert them to paying clients with a credit card in hand?
- What about getting started – is the information overload and overwhelm preventing from even taking the first step to achieving your dream?
- Do you have doubts that you don’t have what it takes to run an online business and that people wouldn’t buy your products or solutions?
I know what this is like as I was asking myself these same questions before launching my own online business that now runs on autopilot. I spent a lot of time procrastinating at the beginning, going after one shiny object after another, spending thousands of dollars unnecessarily.
I learned some powerful techniques to fast track the process to get a business online and I’d like to share with you how to get started.
The good news is there is a way to create a successful online business and it is possible for you, I’d like to share with you how to achieve your new business without wasting valuable time and money.
First, I’ll introduce you to powerful mindsets required to keep you motivated with the creation of your new online business and then we’ll take a look at who you want to serve, what is often called the “niche”.
The steps listed below will only take about 30-60 minutes and will help you to set the foundation to create your new online business today.
Think about it, if less than an hour of your time today could change the course of your life and enable you to achieve your dream, would you do it? I think so and I encourage you to read on and follow the next steps.
So let’s get started…
Step 1: Focus
One of the common obstacles when getting started is procrastination and this can take many forms – waiting until the perfect day… not being in the mood or feeling like it so waiting until the perfect moment… waiting until everything is figured out… spending all of the time learning all of the online tools and latest trends and never getting started on creating the business… waiting until you have enough money… waiting until the next season… waiting until you have more time… spending all of the time on social media and then the day is too late so waiting until tomorrow only to repeat the cycle… and on and on.
The perfect time to start is right now. No matter how small the step is taken to get started, it is one step closer to achieving your dream. Creating a successful online business is done one step at a time. So, by taking the first step today, this gets you in a position to be ready to take the second step and on and on. Over time, you will achieve your dreams. One step at a time.
Focus your time.
One of the keys to productivity and also to reduce procrastination is to do work uninterrupted. Multi-tasking has been proven over and over again to be counterproductive. A 1-hour task easily becomes 2, 3, 4 or more hours of multitasking. So I encourage you to focus your time by eliminating all distractions.
Your action step 1: For the next 30 minutes, I invite you to power off your cell phone, turn off all social media and anything that would be a distraction so that you can focus your time to answer the questions in the next steps.
Step 2: What?
What exactly do you want to achieve in your new online business? It’s important to identify this. Is it to have more time available to do the things you want? Is it to make more money? Is it to have the freedom to work anywhere you want and whenever you want?
Why does this matter? The more clarity you have about what you want to achieve, the more focus you can have to create what you want.
Your action step 2
On a piece of paper, write down the title
“What I want to achieve with my new online business”
then, spend 5 minutes to write down specifically what you want to achieve with your new business.
Step 3: Why?
Next, let’s take a look at why you want to achieve this new business. You already know that there are going to be obstacles and I could probably write a book about what all of those could be. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve and “why” you want to achieve it will help you to stay motivated throughout the process.
Think back to the dreams you had before and that you eventually achieved. Was it a smooth ride along the way? In all probability, there were obstacles that came along the way, although no matter what these were, you overcame them, one at a time. The main reason you would have overcome the obstacles would be due to the strong motivation you had in the first place to achieve what you wanted.
So, I encourage you to create a very strong “why” for why you want to achieve your new online business and this will keep you motivated. It is important to write it down and to look at it in the morning when you wake up and also at night before you go to bed. This will serve as a constant reminder and keep you motivated to keep going when the times are good and also when obstacles get in the way.
Your action step 3
On another piece of paper, write down the title
“Why I want to have a successful online business”.
Next, spend 5 minutes of uninterrupted time and write down “why” you want to achieve your new business. Make sure the “why” is compelling to you to ensure it gets you excited.
Step 4: How much time?
Creating a new online business will take time. The more time you can allocate, naturally, the faster you can realize your dream.
Do you have a current job that you need to keep in order to get income until your new online business is profitable? If so, then I invite you to allocate even a few hours per week to focus on your new business. Make sure that during the time that you allocate to working on your new business is uninterrupted and this will help you to remain focused and achieve steps faster. As you achieve one step with success, this will help you keep motivated to go to the next step with success.
Your action step 4
On another piece of paper, write down the title
“How much time can I allocate to my new online business?”.
Next, spend 5 minutes to identify how much time you can realistically allocate to your new online business.
Step 5: How to identify your niche
Of course, an online business requires paying customers.
Focus on who you want to serve. So, what is key is to identify who your ideal client would be, what are their biggest fears and frustrations, then create solutions to satisfy their needs. The specific type of client or market is often called a “niche”, more on that in one of the steps below. The more people you help, the more money you’ll make. It’s really that simple. You need to create a captive audience that eagerly wants the solutions that you have to offer and there are many ways to create this captive audience.
What if you don’t know what your niche is?
This is a common issue when starting out. So here are easy steps to get you started.
Your action step 5
On another piece of paper, write down the title
“My niche:”.
Next, spend 5 minutes thinking about skills or topics that you are good at that you could help people with. Everyone has skills although sometimes it may not be apparent to you.
- If you are one of those people that are completely “skill-less” (which is highly unlikely), then think about the skills that you would like to have and that becomes your next step to develop that skill.
- Try to come up with at least 5 different topics. If you have more than 5, the next step is to pick 5 out of the topics you wrote down to do research online for possible demand.
- It doesn’t matter what the topics are as the next steps will be to validate if there is a demand.
After you created your list of skills or topics, let’s go online to do some research.
You want to create a new business where there is a demand, competition is good. There’s no point to reinvent the wheel, your goal here is to identify a topic where there is a demand and then create unique solutions for the target audience or “niche”.
This simple research is to get you started in doing basic market research. Take a look at the search results that match the topics you’re interested in, look at the different products that are being offered, read the testimonials to find out what people like or don’t like about the products. This provides invaluable information so competitive analysis is very important so that you don’t waste time creating products or solutions that people don’t want.
Launch your browser and we’ll take a look at 3 social media portals to identify a possible demand for your niche and conduct very high-level market research.
In your browser, go to google.com and in the search bar, enter the topics or interests that you wrote down. Note that as you type, there is an auto-complete function that provides alternative searches that would be similar. For example, when entering weight loss, the following alternatives are presented by Google:
Press enter and you’ll be presented with websites that match the topic entered. Now scroll to the bottom of the page and notice that there are related searches presented.
So, in doing market research for your possible niche, you want to identify common keywords used within your niche or target audience.
On your piece of paper, write down the keywords that you see and then you can use the Google AdWords planner tool (ads.google.com) to do more research on the keywords to see the average monthly searches and level of competition.
- Create a free Google Adwords account at. ads.google.com
- Click the Tools and Settings (top menu)
- Click Keyword Planner
- Click on the arrow in the Discover new keywords section
- Next to the loupe, enter the desired keywords that you want to do keyword research
The following is a sample screenshot showing keyword suggestions for weight loss
Another easy way to do market research is to use Facebook and in the search bar, enter the topics that you listed. This is an example of entering Weight loss in the search bar, notice the different similar topics offered by Facebook:
There you’ll see pages related to the topic and you can start to view the pages and the type of conversations that people have.
After pressing enter, Facebook provides different options available such as photos, pages related to that topic, groups and posts from friends. Go through the related pages and groups to learn invaluable information about the competition and to start triggering ideas on what type of products or solutions you could be offering. Note the See all link on the top right and bottom, clicking either of these will result in more pages listed.
Amazon
You may also use Amazon.com, enter the topics that you listed and see the books related to that topic so enter weight loss books in the search bar. Go through some of the books from the results page, notice the ‘Customers who bought this item also bought’ and ‘Sponsored products related to this item’ to see other books that are related, pay attention to the titles offered.
Go through the ‘Top Customer Reviews’ section and read the comments that people left, this provides useful information about potential prospects and what they liked and didn’t like about the books, providing insight as to what you might be able to offer as a solution or product.
All of this information helps to analyze the competition and the demand for the topics you come up with. Competition is good. It’s better to have 1% of a $1 billion market than 100% of a $1,000 market. You don’t need to spend hours and hours reading every product, book or review. Just do some basic research to give you ideas to get started.
Do you want to fast-track the creation of your new online business?
There are many ways of creating a new online business and the process can be overwhelming. With the many tools available online today to help with the creation of an online business, it is so easy to be overwhelmed and not know which one to use nor how to get started. It’s also easy to go from one tool to another, going from one shiny object to another and never achieving the intended goal to create a profitable online business, wasting both time and money.
My name is André Fortier and I’m an expert at creating and transforming businesses that run in auto-pilot, eliminating all the hard work. One of the important ways of creating and running a profitable business is to create as much automation as possible in the process so I help new business owners create a successful business with automation in mind right from the start.
Of course, you can do it all on your own as there is a ton of information available online and you run the risk of wasting a lot of time and also money (as I have when I first got started). But if you’re looking for someone that has proven skills and experience with creating automated and profitable businesses, then contact me to find out about my done-for-you service options.
Talk soon,
André.
