How To Know If You’re In The Right Online Business
How do you know if you’re in the right online business? An easy indication is, are you making money? And if you are making money online, could you be making more? There are countless ways to make money online, but the main online businesses most people begin with are affiliate marketing, retail, or selling products on eBay. Some other venues include blogging, selling e-Books, and writing articles. If you’ve tried one of these ventures and you’re not making much money yet, should you give up? Definitely not – but you may need to alter your strategy a little. Here are some methods to turn your online business from pointless to profitable.
Tip #1: Change your venue, or add another venue to it. A lot of people try to get started in affiliate marketing. It’s fast, it’s easy; I could set up an affiliate site within an hour and sit back waiting for the money to roll in. But it would be like trying to fill up a bathtub with the tears I shed reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Countless people build affiliate sites and then end up making about $6 a month, or nothing at all. The reason is, affiliate marketing only brings in revenue if you have sufficient traffic, and if that traffic is actually interested in your links. If you’ve built an affiliate site and you’re not making any money, you need to figure out how to bring in more visitors and interest them in your links. The best way to do this is to add products and/or a blog/article series to your website. You need informative, valuable content to draw visitors in, or great products. The benefit of the former tack is that it also helps you build a positive, trustworthy image with your visitors which helps you to promote your affiliate links. So if you are not currently making money off your affiliate website, try adding another venue like a blog or product line. If you’re addition is successful, you may want to switch entirely to articles or products.
Tip #2: Don’t be married to a particular product. It’s natural to want to sell a product you’re passionate about: if you absolutely love knitting, it makes sense to set up a knitting-supplies website. In fact, this can be very beneficial since you can easily write tips and articles on knitting to help with your SEO and customer satisfaction. However, the product you are passionate about may not be profitable. Perhaps it’s difficult to ship, or you can’t find a great supplier. You may love to knit, but you’re in e-commerce to make money. If you can make money selling fishing reels or steel-toed boots, than that’s what you should sell. If you aren’t having much success with your current product line, whether selling from a website or on eBay, then switch to another kind of product. Don’t follow your knitting needles to the poorhouse.
photo credit: nicasaurusrex
Tip #3: Don’t be afraid to try new things. Maybe you’ve been selling on eBay for a while now, and you’re reading to expand, but the idea of opening your own eBay store terrifies you. Bite the bullet and give it a try – the key is to start small, and enlist help. The wonderful thing about e-commerce is the plethora of information you can find online and the like-minded individuals you can connect with. Arm yourself with knowledge and advice by doing your online research, then take baby steps. Don’t overinvest – see below.
Tip #4: Experiment before you lay out cash. Never sink a large amount of money into website design or marketing until you’ve done a test run. For instance, let’s say you want to sell your handmade earrings from a website. Before you pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to have one made, try selling a few earrings on Etsy or eBay. You’ll get a pretty good idea of the demand and the price you can sell them for. Once you know your earrings are a hot ticket, you can invest in the website. This is even more true for advertising. Test a particular promotion or pay-per-click advertising for a particular keyword on a small scale. If it’s successful, then you can invest some real money into it.
