Online Business – Six Steps to Starting Your First Online Business – Part 1

August 2, 2016

Blog Images.001Online Business Part 1 – Getting Started

Have you started your Online Business yet?

Yes? Great, how is it going?

No? Why not? What is holding you back?

Getting started is the most difficult part of any business and finding the right place to start can be a real challenge.  So I thought I would create a series of posts to help you get started.

This Series is going to cover:

So, lets dive in and get started right now!

Download my Ultimate Online Course Creation Cheatsheets by Clicking on this link to access it immediately

Step One – Getting Started!

Firstly I want to share an important framework with you – which I use for my Online Courses business:

  • Plan – get your business plan organised
  • Produce – produce your digital product
  • Publish – get the product out there
  • Proof – obtain endorsements and social proof
  • Promote – gear up your marketing efforts
  • Platforms – expand and scale your business with repurposing and by using different platforms, on and off line.

You need to decide what your online business is going to focus on.  The options are very wide indeed but I will be focusing on just one as I think its the easiest way to get an online business started.

You could:

  • start an ecommerce business – eBay, Amazon FBA, etsy
  • become an affiliate – click bank, jvzoo
  • write ebooks – kindle
  • create digital products
  • high end private coaching over Skype
  • sell products on your own website
  • sell your services through your website or through a podcast – consulting

My favourite of these is creating your own digital products based on your own expertise.  We are all experts in so many topics and through the internet we can find literally millions of people who are prepared to pay you to share that expertise with them.

So, your first step is to identify your own expertise.

So what are you expert at?

Evaluate your own skills based on your training and experience. Cast the net wide and consider everything in which you have any expertise. Remember the definition of an expert is someone who knows more than you do.

  • Work
  • Qualifications
  • Experience
  • Hobbies and Passions

There are some Evergreen topics for which there is always demand.  Consider some of these – identify those in which you have existing expertise?

  • Leadership
  • Investing
  • Productivity
  • Sales
  • Motivation
  • Spirituality
  • Marketing
  • Health
  • Parenting
  • Business
  • Relationships

Next I want you to focus on the PAIN that your potential customers are suffering from. Remember – pain sells!

  • What do people around you ask you to solve for them?
  • What do you know they need?
  • What results to they want, but cannot achieve on their own?

Once you have identified the topic on which you are going to establish yourself in, you need to plan your first digital product.

Remember, you may be an established expert in your field already, what you need to do is to bring that expertise to your online audience and become known and respected as an authority in that field.

Here are the key steps you need to follow.

  • Have a Course Planning Road Map
    1. To be successful you need to have a portfolio of courses and digital products to offer to your students.
    2. The worst way to create these is one at a time with little or no planning
    3. Instead, work out what you are going to create for your first six to 10 courses. They should be in related but not overlapping subjects
    4. You want to build a student body who know, like and trust your courses and to whom you can cross sell.
    5. Creating a cluster of unrelated courses is a critical mistake and will greatly reduce your income potential
  • New Course Content
    1. Once you have created some core courses, I recommend that you create several 30-45 minute niche courses which relate to your existing core content. You can cross sell these to your existing students.
  • Topic Selection
    1. Create courses which address a pain or problem for your students.
    2. Teach a new skill – preferably one with career, business or money earning benefits
    3. Be specific, have a clear end objective for the course.
    4. General “theoretical” courses do not compete well against courses which are addressing specific student needs.
    5. Review the Competition – What are other experts in your field doing?
    6. Remember above all your students are asking, Whats in it for me?
  • Course Length
    1. Consider your product/course price and related the length and quality of your content to the price you plan to charge for it.
    2. Course Quality is important and it must deliver the result promised
    3. The minimum length I would recommend is 60 minutes for a stand alone course
    4. Max length? This is a hotly debated topic. No longer than 2 hours and ideally 60 to 90 minutes in my view
    5. Students prefer concise courses that solve their problem
    6. If you have six hours of content – split it into Modules or separate parts and create three separate courses

Online Business Part 2 – Product Creation

In Part 2 of this series, I am going to share with you how you go about creating a digital product. – Just Click Here