My 5 Steps to Starting Your First Online Business

Posted on October 19th, 2007 by Dave

YES, this article is old school. But people still need to know. The original internet users who were early adopters are so far beyond most of us on the web that this piece is not for them. And there are those of us who are just regular users who probably don’t need this information either, but pulling up the rear are the people just getting started online. Every day new people are going to go online for the first time. And they are going to go through the same evolution as all of us: Look at all this porn! Hey, I can buy stuff cheaper! I can pay my bills! Wait a minute-I can make money!

My mom has a friend, who has a typing and resume service here in Chicago. The friend’s got a website and asked me for a little input. So I’m going to pass the savings on to YOU and tell you what I told her. Clearly I’m no master strategist on website popularity, but I think I’ve picked up enough to get a newcomer up and running.

1. Look at your competition. I think one of the first things a person who is taking their business online needs to know is how would their business even look online. The best way to do that is to see how a successful version of themselves operates. Visit a competitors site and go through it with a fine toothed comb to see not only how they’re site is set up, but to learn about their traffic.

2. Which brings us next point; learn about traffic. Visit sites like Alexa to see how much traffic those relevant sites are getting. And when you make your own site, get some data about your own traffic. A stat counter will tell you how much traffic you have and where the visitors are coming from.

3. And that brings me to point three. Research. People tend to put the cart before the horse. They build a site, get no business, and then start doing the research to figure out WHY they get no business. So use the web. I am giving you my 100 percent guarantee that all the information you need to make money online can be found online. But you’ve got to crawl before you walk. As I told the friend; just type your exact questions into a search engine like Google, and start putting together a knowledge base. You actually need to learn what it is you need to learn.

4. That takes us to the next point; focused research. After you get past the nuts and bolts of building your own website learn about Search Engine Optimization. My friend had all the beginner’s problems like; how to do specific things with the html editor (Dreamweaver in this case), what are meta tags and how to get them, should she have a splash page (no, by the way), and additional things of this nature. But once you figure out what SEO is that’s when the real learning begins. And that’s when you need to make your first big decision; do it yourself or pay somebody else. Money can be made on the internet-but if you plan on making some, you’re either going to have to invest your time learning how or hire somebody to set you up. There’s a very good chance you’ll do some combination of both.

And to just take a step back for a second; software like Dreamweaver, for a new person, might be TOO strong. When I had my first class in Dreamweaver 3 it only took about a day to get the basics down. But today’s version of the program is not only a powerhouse its complex as hell. You can do anything you want with DW, but you need to learn how. And I recommend free online tutorials, either reading or watching like at Lynda.com.

5. Revise your original online strategy. After you start to have a more informed view of what it is you are trying to do it’s a good time to reevaluate and make sure your first plan is still appropriate. In my friends case she made a pretty common flaw, opening a site that’s just an empty storefront. She DOES have a service that people want, but the site doesn’t. A website should have content. No two ways about it. You better have stuff that people can buy like Amazon, or be saying something that people want to hear. That’s pretty much it. It can be tangible or intangible. For what you want to sell you might be better off with a blog. One of the blogs I read this week talked about what a site should have; something that’s unique and scarce. That might be hard to understand if you’re thinking of giant sites like Amazon, Ebay or MySpace, but really its not. Each item for sale, or auction or individual profile is specific to the person searching.

I’d love to hear your input, just keep in mind this piece is aimed at the newer online business start ups. There are an endless number of links on this subject, and now that even includes me. Here are just a few productive links I found just this week.