Do You Have An Online ‘Business’ Or Do You Have A Website?

It’s been four years now since I’ve been personally mentoring and consulting with Independent Professionals to market their business online and in the beginning, I battled with how to make the marketing process both easier to manage timewise – these are busy folk – and often less technical.

But there is no getting around it though, marketing online takes work – often hard work – and some people are committed to putting that time in and others just simply struggle because they are having to do everything themselves – which I don’t recommend by the way.

And, then there is the other problem of the myriad of emails they receive daily about a new way of getting traffic or a new way of doing business online which causes the unseasoned online marketer to think he or she needs every new tool advertised.

Well I’m going to tell you, buying every new course or tool or attending every seminar program that people hail as that latest breakthrough event of your life, is the surest way to end up broke!  Not merely because of the amount of money you spend, but – and learn from me, because I’ve been guilty of this…

YOU LOSE FOCUS!

And soon, you won’t know whether you want to market your products or services online, make money with AdSense, create a membership site or sell other people’s products.

And this is what complicates the process of marketing online more than anything else in my view, because in most cases, if you just followed the step-by-step program that you had purchased, you’ll have a business in less time than it would take you to start the course and then stop to start another course.

Just follow the process!

The view I started taking when yet another new program was advertised was that “this system I already have worked for someone else, so it must work for me too!”

So before you can even consider marketing your online business, you have to have a business!  And by this, I mean a business model.  So will you:

• Own a product – sell products or your services online
  
• Own a list – build a list which will be used to monetize later on – for example from affiliate marketing
  
• Own a membership site – receive money through paid subscriptions
  
• Own traffic (advertising) – put Google AdSense or other ads on your website
  
• Own relationships (MLM or Multi Level marketing)
  
• Own your time – consulting

Once you know and understand the business model you are following, the marketing process really does get a lot easier, both in terms of time and technically – even if you are having to do it yourself initially, because you will spend less time learning and more time doing.

So if there is one piece of advice I could give you today about doing business online it’s to…

Decide what business you’re going to be in and then stick to it!

I don’t even want to fire off now about all the programs recommending Niche Market, Virtual Real Estate building because in my view, this is a recipe for disaster for the newbie online marketer, whether you have an established offline business already or not.

It’s not that I have anything against Niche Marketing or, do I think AdSense is bad, but when people run off in different directions, they fail to get a grip on the process.

Once your website is up, it’s not okay to write a few pages, or post a few blogs, maybe even send out a few articles and then sit there and expect to get a flurry of traffic.  It’s okay to do it, but just don’t expect that “because you’ve built it, they will now come!”

This method may have worked many moons ago, but this is the 21st Century and competition online is stiff!  You have to be persistently consistent with your online marketing efforts so you end up with a business and not just a website or, glorified brochure as I like to call them.

So, whether you spend thousands of dollars on getting your website built professionally by a webmaster or you create a website of your own, as Stephen Pierce would say, “if you don’t have any traffic, you don’t have a business and if you don’t have a business (i.e. people exchanging their cash for your products or services) you don’t have any money!“ .

If you want to simplify the process of marketing online, in the next blog post, I’ll go over the 4 Smart Ways To Market Your Business Online.  So be sure to come back and check it out.

Best of Sucess,

Related posts:

1. Blogging Isn’t a Business