Starting An Online Business?
If you're looking to start an online business, part-time or full-time, chances are I've gone through (and survived) the pains you may experience. Starting with how to get your website on-line! This could be an updated or new website for a conventional, offline business. Or you could be looking to start an online business from home.
I am especially mindful of the needs of people like me who didn't make the best of pension provisions and are now looking to start an online business to supplement retirement income.
Online Business Services From Joy Healey
First off, you may want to know a little more about me.
If you think we could be a good fit for each other, you are invited to request a free 30 minute chat (no obligations) to explore your options. See my Contact page.
If I'm not the right person to do what you need, there's a good chance I know someone who will be just right for you. I work with a team of trusted professionals, built up over many years, and will only recommend someone whose work I believe in.
You may want to discuss the type of business to set up and I'll be happy to share my experiences (good and bad).
Updated July 2021
As my online experience increased, I discovered that it's virtually impossible to be successful online without a comprehensive set of business tools. And they were:
- Expensive
- Complicated to get working together
I was virtually at the point of quitting, because the expenses were just mounting up.
Then I found ONE set of essential business tools that is perfect to recommend to anyone starting out online, because all the tools you could want (and may not yet know you need) are available free in this one site (Click here).
If / when your business is profitable enough to have out-grown the free tools, there's the option to upgrade, but by then the cost will easily be covered by your profits.
There's NO risk involved in setting up your free account to see what's on offer. Click here for your free business tools account.
A WordPress Blog?
If you already have a self-hosted WordPress blog you may prefer to continue with that – even though the free account above offers you THREE blogs. (I'll continue blogging on this platform because moving it to the new account would be too much hassle.
If you feel the same, you will still benefit from my Amazon book on growing your online business.
Some small businesses market their services on social media because it's free. Along with many others I think this is a mistake, as you don't own the platform and the site could shut you down for any reason. Think that's alarmist? Well it happened to me and I never found out why!
So instead I believe you should own your own website.
This site that you're looking at is a blog – personally I add new content to it every week, but it's your choice how often to add content. You could even set it up and add NO regularly content, just update the static pages.
Some small businesses may not have the time to maintain a blog. For instance, an electrician (or other trade) may just want to be found quickly online, and give bare contact details to potential clients.
Whatever type of website you choose, it's vital that it's mobile friendly
So, for most businesses with no existing website I recommend the use of a mobile-enabled (responsive) blog – for many reasons that are detailed in my Amazon book “Grow Your Business – A Crash Course in Online Marketing“, currently available at a low special price.
My book explains how to get your site setup without spending a ton of cash.
Once your blog is set up, you have the flexibility of handling your own site management, or sub-contracting your online business services out.
It's all explained in the book.
Why spend time on website creation when you can be spending time on the aspects of your business that you are really good at?
Another useful skill you can learn is affiliate marketing – where you are saved the trouble of creating your own product. Instead you promote someone else's product and take a share of the profits.
Learn Affiliate Marketing
Here you can register for the free affiliate marketing course. In fact, at the time of writing (July 2021) the owners of this course will actually pay you $20 to complete it!
This also includes training on building your own email list. Trust me – it's never too early to start building an email list!
The same course includes free list building training. Please note: although the skills are transferable, this training is mainly for those in the ‘Online Business Opportunity' marketplace.
But whatever type of business you choose, the biggest question you need to address is your auto-responder.
Vital Tool For Email Marketing
Yes – the most essential of all online business services is an auto-responder which is a tool that captures your visitors' contact details (via a squeeze page) and lets you legitimately email people who expressed interest in your site / products, but didn't buy first time. So you ‘follow-up' with more information using an auto-responder.
To take a trial / learn more about one of the industry standard auto-responders click here.=
Their support and training is excellent and it's very affordable.
Shortly (if not already) email marketing will be included in the free business tools account above – until then, it's very easy to integrate to the industry standard auto-responder above,
When you have your autoresponder in place….
How Will You Get Visitors?
The most wonderful website in the world is no good to your business if no-one sees it. Do you need:
- Local traffic (for instance for a plumber or electrician)
- Country-based traffic (for instance for a product that can be supplied by post)
- World-wide (e.g. if you have a downloadable information product, available to a niche market)
Probably the cheapest way to get visitors to your offers is with free traffic (NOT paid adverts) from your Facebook profile. I didn't think I could do that, but this very low cost course changed all that.
Click here for Free Traffic From Facebook (affiliate link).
Rather than relying on one source of traffic you will probably want to consider several sources:
- Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc)
- Paid Traffic (choose wisely there are some sharks out there!)
- Forum advertising
- Community Marketing (time consuming but very effective)
- Getting Found In Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization)
Much of this is covered in the Free Affiliate Marketing Training course here.
So What Next?
That was a whirl-wind tour through what you need to become a successful online marketer, because what's appropriate for one person is totally wrong for another.
So please let me will tailor a package to your needs by having a no-obligation chat.
If you're looking for coaching services I don't offer them! But I know several people who do, and we can explore which coach might be best for you as some are better than others, let's just say 🙂 Coaching is NOT always the best solution.
Please contact me here with brief notes of how I can help you, and times when you'd be available to chat. I work on London/UK time so I'm sure we can find a mutually convenient time.
