How to Build a Successful Online Business

It is truly a great feeling running your own online business. I love the freedom that I have to work from where I want to. Usually this is home, but it can be the coffee shop as I sip a latte and write on my laptop, or even while traveling around the country and also overseas.  It is great being able to set my own hours, work on those tasks that I want to and also enjoy the ability to make money online.

I started using the internet about 3 years ago to create income and as soon as I even think about income generating the internet is where my mind jumps to. Now, as you sit and read this, I need to immediately jump to that question in your head, ‘Is he really making any money online?”. Well, the truth is, initially I didn’t. I first got into the internet as a source of income 3 years ago as I said, and it was a real struggle to start generating that income that I desired. I was investigating every single way to make money, but no matter what I did, I never seemed to bring in more than a few hundred dollars a month. Now while this was better than nothing, with all of the hours I was investing into this new online business venture it was not enough to support a full time income and family.

Now, lets jump to today. The journey has been a very interesting experience. I have been able to learn a lot about myself. I have always called myself an entrepreneur. Right from the days of being 5 years old, I was selling my sweets to passers by outside my house for a profit. (Granted, these were my neighbors who were retired and thought I was more cute than them getting a good deal). The thing about the internet that I quickly learnt was that you can’t just jump in and expect to make money. Why? Well, there are so many people trying to do the same thing.

I quickly discovered that in order to be successful on the web, I would need to come up with my own niche and do things that other people weren’t doing yet. This of course is the difference between the types of entrepreneurs who come up with the ideas, and those that follow what others have done. I stopped copying everyone else and started coming up with my own strategies. And this is what you need to do if you want to be successful with an online business. You need to be different. Chances are there are already 1000 websites doing what you are doing, but if you can be different and offer some real value, then you will start to achieve and your goals for income generation will be on their way to fruition.

With any business comes responsibility and hard work. Whether it is a bricks and mortar business, or an online business, you need to work hard at it to be successful. With an online business you have a much lower entry level cost to startup. All you really need to do is pay for some hosting and domain charges and perhaps a website designer if you are prepared to fork out a bit of cash. Because it is such a lower cost to get started, you need to be even better than the rest. A bricks and mortar business will pay for a premises (rental or purchase), staff costs, inventory, equipment, advertising, utilities, etc etc. BUT, if it is run properly, and like a proper business, it can achieve great things and generate a real income to the owner. The key word here is that it needs to be run properly, like a business. This needs to also be applied to the world of online businesses. In order for your blog or website to be successful, you need to run it like a business. You need to manage your site, your posts, or orders and ensure that things are happening. Like a business, you will monitor your success and make tweaks here and there. The same applies for your online business.

There are however great differences between the online and the ‘real’ world. For instance, in the online world, if you make mistakes along the way thing usually can be fixed, or you just drop the idea and move on. In the real world, if you start a business you can potentially lose a lot of money if it fails. Whereas if your online business fails you probably lost a couple hundred dollars and a few weeks of work. I’m not saying that you can’t lose online, but the risk to you financially is greatly reduced. This of course does not take into account all types of online businesses, such as those that sell real products or services. Of whom, you may have larger startup costs such as website design, legal contracts and agreements and some physical space to store your inventory such as a warehouse.

The best thing about an online business is that you can start small and get bigger when you are ready. For instance, I started as a small timer, with my own personal blog and a few Adsense ads on it. I was doing this part time when I had a few minutes free from my full time job as an accountant. Over time, I have spent more time on my online businesses and have branched out into different marketing strategies and opportunities. This has resulted in a much more substantial income with much less hours involved per week than my previous employment as an accountant.

this income of course can only come through one thing, and that is traffic generation. Without people visiting my sites and purchasing my products and services, there is no way I would get exposure and make the income that I am today enjoying. This was my largest hurdle that I had to jump to take my online income from a small amount each month, to a 5 figure monthly income. The best way to reach your audience and generate traffic is through valuable content, and this was explained in an earlier post.

Remember, no matter how hard it may seem, don’t give up. I could have easily given up when I started. It took me 5 months to make any money online at all, and that was a hard part of my life. I was learning a lot about business, about the internet and about myself. But I stuck with it and I have no regrets. Most people will fail, and I see it all the time. The enthusiasm is so high when they start. The chance of getting ahead in life, of making some extra money to allow them to get out of debt, or pay for a new car, or holiday. They see the end result, but don’t really think about the in between bit. They don’t map our their plan to reach their destination, so their journey is full of trouble, wrong turns and dead ends.

At the end of the day. You can do it if you have the right motivation, commitment and eagerness to learn something new. If you aren’t internet savy, then I would recommend that you get some professional help, or do some research. It is so important to make sure you are following the correct process from the start, as a technical problem could cause a larger problem down the track, such as reducing your possible traffic, simply because of the structure of your website design and backend coding. While things may take awhile to get going, if you have a great site, fantastic content and a strategy for traffic, success and realistic targets don’t let anything get in your way of achieving success as you build a successful online business and ultimatily make money online.