SEVEN STEPS TO STARTING A REAL BUSINESS ONLINE - STEP 7
by: Cary Christian

Thus far we have covered the following steps in starting your own real business online:

Step 1 - Introduction and basics
Step 2 - Assessing your personality, the type of business you want to run, and inventorying your skills, experience and interests.
Step 3 - Identification of needs you can fill, identification of a market that needs what you can provide, and segmenting that market into niches.
Step 4 - Deciding on what products you want to offer and assessing your competition.
Step 5 - Determining how you are going to acquire your products and assessing your financial situation.
Step 6 - Writing your business plan and taking care of the technicalities.

Tonight we are going to cover Step 7; the final step.

STEP 7

1. Develop, acquire and perfect your products.

The research, planning and dreaming are all done. It's time to take the plunge.

Get the final programming completed on that software application you're going to sell. Test it rigorously and fix any problems you might find. Give a copy to your friends and let them use it and tell you what's wrong. Develop a list of the major functions the software needs to perform flawlessly and test every variation you can think of.

Finish writing that ebook or special report you've been working on. Read it and reread it from a customer's point of view.  Anticipate questions your readers might have and answer them.  Spruce it up and make it look nice. Professionalism counts.

Make your final arrangements with drop shippers. Make sure they're ready to ship and that you understand how quickly they are going to be able to respond once you start making sales.  Perfect all your financial arrangements with them so you'll know exactly what your payment terms are going to be.

Check and double check your website. Is the order process easy for the customer? Has it been streamlined to the maximum extent possible? Do all your links work?

Check your sales copy. Read it and ask yourself if it leaves you with any unanswered questions. Make sure you are focused on benefits rather than features.

Are your upsells and backend sales strategies in place? If you want to maximize your profits, make sure they are.

Check your links. Be absolutely certain they all work.  Nothing will chase a customer away faster than dead links.

Everything's fine? Then let's . . .

2. Launch!

Make a big deal of it! Push yourself away from the dock with an advertising blitz. Start off with some absolutely amazing sales. Not on everything, of course. Think "loss leaders."  Pick a product or two that will be very popular at a given discounted price and market the heck out of them. Use every strategy at your disposal to get people to your site.

Doing the best you can, you're still likely to find the going slow at first. It takes some time to build traffic to your site. But if you've done your homework properly in the previous steps, you're ready and able to start off with some decent numbers.

Be patient. Understand that building your business takes time.  But at least now you have one! It's yours. You're no longer selling someone else's products for a small piece of the action.  You're in control. Your hard work has produced an asset that may someday eliminate your need to ever work for someone else again. Nurture it. Grow it slowly day by day.

And now that you've created your new business, start thinking of ways you can redefine it. Never stop thinking of new products or services you can offer. Constantly be on the lookout for upsell and backend sale products that complement your existing offerings.

I realize that I've presented these steps quickly. Three relatively short articles is not a lot of space to adequately address the ideas presented. But you now have a rough blueprint that you can follow. If you get started on the path and do some research to fill in the gaps, you'll find yourself making progress towards your entrepreneurial goals. If you have questions or would like to explore any of these steps in more detail, just send us an email and we'll be happy to help!

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