Online Success Considerations

Get Results: online success
Get Results: online success

I’m asked quite a lot about the requirements for achieving online success, so have done a walk-through of the considerations for achieving online success, so check it out below.

I haven’t elaborated on each of the points, rather I am just trying to highlight considerations, there are other posts on this site that deal with details.

This site isn’t specifically designed around providing information about running an online business, but I have a number of articles about the subject, based on my research and own experience, which are linked to at the end of this post.

This post is designed for people who want online success, to get results with their online business, but are getting, frustrated, puzzled (why is it not working?), feel like giving up, have run out of ideas.

Let’s begin…

Goal

Let’s assume your goal is to achieve online success.

What’s needed to get there, and what is your target? Make sure you have an end goal in mind, before you begin. You can, by all means, have a number of interim goals, that get increasingly bigger, but by having an end goal you will ensure you are fully in alignment, and not deviating on your journey.

i.e. Making an online income of 10k month

Something to sell

Must first have something to sell that is in-demand by prospective customers, and either…

  • Monetise via advertising (bring audience to advertisers)
  • Monetise via sponsorships (bring audience to advertisers)
  • Monetise via selling..
    • Own products/services via…
      • Membership site
      • E-commerce site
        • including professional products or services
          • One to one coaching
          • Done for you services
          • Physical products
          • Digital products
    • Other people’s/businesses products

Traffic

Get large enough audience/traffic volume to make a living from sales/advertising revenue – bigger volume needed on tighter profit margins.

  • Produce and use content to pull prospects to sales channel
    • Allow audience to get to know you
    • Build trust, likeability
      • Add value to them
      • Offer extra help and support
      • Allow them to see you in action
  • Advertising online and offline channels
    • Point all advertising back to content and sales pages
  • Pay affiliates to drive sales
    • Influencers with big audience made up of your customer profiles
  • Get backlinks from other reputable websites
    • Guest posting on other websites and linking back to your site
    • Share graphics or unique content with other  websites with attribution link back to your site
  • Optimise website for SEO, using tags, keywords in content text, internal and external links

Problem identification

i.e. Not getting success online

  • A. Not building volume of traffic to lead pages and then sales pages
    • to social media pages
    • content pages
    • sales pages
  • B. Not enough engagement/interest in content and then products, no free sharing to help in cost of building volume either
  • C. No way of monetising or not effectively monetising off back of content

Analysis

A and B. Is the lack of traffic down to…

  • #1- Quality of content not engaging and building volume (being shared for free)?
  • #2- Not effectively marketing well enough?

#1- Producing the Quality Content

  • Is the subject matter in-demand?
    • If so, by whom?
    • Where is the attention of these people?
    • How can I best reach them?
    • What are their pains/passions/desires?
      • What are they having difficulty with?
      • Where and why are they stuck?
      • How can I help them get unstuck?

Generating content ideas

  • Go to forums, online groups, niche thought leaders and see what is being asked, and become part of that community (commenting, asking questions and adding value by giving insight) – Do this for interaction with the community (marketing) and getting content ideas
  • Check out books in the niche (Amazon) and see what is being written about (table of contents)
  • Check out magazines and publications within the niche to see what is being written about
  • Check mainstream media  to see what is being written/talked about

Is the content good enough?

  • Is it attractive?  Images, text, video
  • Is it interesting? – Valuable, useful, well presented – does it benefit the reader?
  • Am I talented/skilled enough to pull it off (writing skills, video capture/editing skills, speaking skills)
  • Is the content easily digestible (clear, interesting and valuable)?
    • Easy to navigate
    • Links to similar content
    • Well structured
    • Broken into easy to digest paragraphs
    • Good grammar
  • Does it cater for different media preferences?
    • Written,
    • Video,
    • Audio,
    • Images,
    • Graphic models
  • Is it presented from a unique perspective? Not the same as competitors

Are you credible enough?

  • Proven track record
    • Income statements
    • Past prestigious customers
    • Case studies
    • Testimonials and reviews
  • Or Documenting my journey – testing “crash test dummy”
    • Case studies
    • What I’ve done up to now and what I’ve learned
    • Testing ideas
  • Or Collating and commentating on well renown others
    • Talking about other’s ideas
    • Testing what other’s suggest

#2- effective marketing of content – look for low acquisition costs (underpriced attention)

  • Are you using social media effectively (where the prospects attention is focused) to drive traffic to content/sales pages?
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
    • Snapchat
    • Linkdin
    • Quora
    • Reddit
    • StumbleUpon
    • Google plus
    • Musica.lly app
  • Understand the psychology of these channels, the acceptable code of conduct and make sure you don’t break these.
  • Are there any other marketing channels available to target specific audience that you’re not making use of?
    • Look at niche specific publications, forums, chat groups, to see if any are being advertised, or discussed.

c. Monetising off back of content

  • Is there a service or product to sell at the bottom of your sales funnel?
  • Is the product service valuable (demanded/needed/wanted)?
    • Sell professional services/products (one to one coaching)
    • Via ecommerce or drop ship
    • Via digital media
  • Are there other methods of monetising available for this niche, that can be lucrative enough?
    • Advertising
    • Sponsorship
    • Affiliates

Not getting results

Online failure points

  • Failure to get site ranked high in SERP’s
  • Not enough traffic to website via
    • SEO
      • Optimise for onsite and offsite SEO
    • PPC or social media ads
      • Get to know and understand marketing channels on social media, particularly Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and on Google PPC
    • Backlinking
      • Link wheels
      • Ask for links
      • Make content usable for other bloggers/content creators
    • Content marketing
      • Get content seen on niche specific forums/groups
      • Get content In front of influencers who will freely promote your stuff or you can pay to do so
      • Post on – https://www.quora.com/

Get advert clicks on website

  • Make the offers enticing enough, relevant enough
  • Blend the ads to look like links to other parts of website (posters) so they click on them by accident
  • Have enough ads around content area

Convert visitor’s to subscribers or get customer’s on website

  • Incentivise visitors using content upgrades, free reports, white papers etc
  • Scarcity – make the offer limited (number/timescale)

Get more customers

  • Advertise/add value on channels where prospect attention is focused
  • or where influencers (who can increase your reach) are situated
  • incentivise referrals

For more about online business, click here.