The difference between starting an online business and an offline business isn’t as great as you think.  You need to employ the same basic strategies to both if you want to succeed.  People starting an online business (newbie’s) often find it difficult to make any sort of an impression at first.  Because of this they start to think that if they use a different strategy or buy yet another course or latch on to the next big wave they’ll be successful. Succeeding in a new business is about learning the simple things well, having a consistent approach and being patient.  It’s not about trying to find the next magic bullet.  The internet is littered with people who have tried just that and failed. The following three tips will help you to understand some of the basic principles for a home business.

It’s you there interested in!

With the advent of social media, blogs video etc, etc you can’t be a closet online marketer.  You have to get out there and make an impression you have to brand yourself in everything that you do.  It’s simple; people get involved with people they trust.  Trust comes from people feeling that they know you or know about you.  If you want people to buy your products or join your business opportunity tell them about you first give them an opportunity to find out about you.  You have to decide what aspects of yourself you are willing to make public but if there’s not even a photo of you on your blog or on Facebook you’re not going to get very far because the trust will not be there.

You’re Goals

Most people who start an online business set some sort of goals to help them get going.  This may be in the form of a list or on a fancy spreadsheet or with some project type software.  I call these here and now goals.  They are essential to getting things going and building momentum.  The vast proportion of people however stop there they don’t think about how they will expand and grow in the future, where they want to be or how much money they want or need to earn.  Do you know what your medium and long term business goals are?  A good business person is always thinking about how to develop ideas and grow their business.  If you want to still be around in a year or two’s time you should look closely at setting some achievable and measurable goals for your online business.  You can’t see in to the future but you can project your vision there.  You can picture in your mind exactly where you want to be and put a plan in place and visualise it.

I like this quote on vision from Mao Tse-Tung:

“We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well.  He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well.  If he surfaced, he would see an entirely different view.”

Getting an online business going can be very hard work but don’t let this scare you go after your dreams.  If you don’t who else will?

Track your businesses results 

From day one track what you are doing and where your results are coming from. I didn’t do this when I started on my online business and oh what a big mistake that was.  If you don’t do this your business will suffer.  Time and energy and money will be wasted concentrating on strategies that are not working.  Tracking your results on Google analytics or other similar sites or with by copying data from your hosting account to a spreadsheets if that’s all you know how to do. It’s critical to you your online work to know metrics such as how many visits to you blogs or websites, how many page views, traffic sources and so on. From this information come the tweaks and changes that make your strategies successful.  Sometimes simple changes to what you are doing on line can make a huge difference to your results but you have to have the tracking information to be able to see where to make the changes. The internet is unique in that it provides a myriad of ways to track your progress and performance but most people don’t take advantage of it.

To sum up:

The short discussion in this article will help you starting and online busines.  I have outlined some of the fundamentals you will need to create a good foundation for your online business.

If you are serious about succeeding with your online business, visit my blog at Dave Ward.org to learn about: Social Networking, Email Marketing, Blogging, Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online, YouTube Video Marketing and much, much more.

Dave Ward