The key to success on the Net for the small business owner
is to master an indemand niche. With a niche-focused business, your competition
will be lower and it will be easier for targeted, interested visitors to find
your Web site. And “visitors” equals “traffic”… the lifeblood of any business.
In the offline world, traffic is relatively easy to achieve
– it’s all about “location, location, location.” For example, an attractive,
nicely merchandised store in a mall or on a busy shopping street usually means
instant traffic -- and sales, of course!
However, in the online world, no one just happens to walk
past, see your product or service and enter. Surfers on the Net are not looking
for you or your business. People search for information, for solutions. After
all, if they knew you existed, they would not be searching. They would already
be customers.
Online, you must generate your own traffic to be successful.
Your primary task -- well before you make your first sale or contract to a
customer (often well before that person is even aware that s/he is shopping!)
-- is to provide the information (i.e., high value content) that people are
searching for, in a way that the Search Engines like.
If you do that…
A higher search ranking at the engines makes your site
easier to find. Your quality content (your words!) builds credibility in the
minds of your visitors and converts them into warm PREsold customers. From
there, you can easily get that click through to your monetization model (i.e.,
how you generate income). That could be your order page for your product, or
your merchant’s site that you represent as an affiliate, or your contact form
for hiring details, or Google’s AdSense program, etc.
This is what an effective Theme-Based Content Site is all
about!
Take-home lesson?
Make the critical offline-to-online mind shift and you will
join the 2% of small business owners who succeed on the Net. Focus on… “Information,
information, information.”
By building a Theme-Based Content Site, you will be growing
your clientele (i.e., targeted traffic) from the ground up. Owning your traffic
is essential to your longevity on the Net because…
If you don’t own your traffic, you don’t own your business. An
effective Theme-Based Content Site will be searched-and-found by prospective
customers -- a number that will increase steadily as your site gains in reputation
and relevance at the Search Engines. Simply put, you will be building a site
that works for you, not the other way around!
So how do you build a site that works? It all boils down to
this do-able process…
1) Develop a valuable product or service -- your own
creation or someone else’s!
2) Develop your own site in the niche that you know and
love.
3) Fill that site with high-value content.
4) Use that content to attract your own niche-targeted
traffic.
5) Build trust and credibility with your visitors.
6) Use content to PREsell your targeted visitors. And...
7) Convert that PREsold, warm, willing-to-buy traffic into
sales or contracts.
8) Diversify your revenue plan to include other monetization
options (ex., Google’s AdSense, affiliate income, services, etc), all related
to your site’s theme-based content. This diversification will help you grow a
stable business that you own, one with true equity.
The process is simple, straightforward and easy once you
shift your thinking to… “Information first… income generation, second.”
There are simply no other variables to blindside your goal.
If you “do” each step of the process correctly, your Net venture will prosper.
No, it must prosper. But, here’s the catch...
You have to succeed at all steps. And the good news is that
anyone can succeed if they combine motivation, the right process and tools and
a little hard work.
So why then do 98% of online businesses fail? Sadly, their
owners started with and continued to follow the wrong process…
1) Create a product/service.
2) Create site to sell a product/service.
3) Add payment and fulfillment solutions.
4) Die due to lack of traffic.
Most small businesses fail because they skip several
important steps. They prepare to sell and collect money, before they have
provided what their visitors are searching for --information. How
disappointing! This type of result is completely avoidable.
Take a minute and do a quick comparison of the “success”
process and the “failure” process…
As you can see, the first step about product development is
similar. After all, a poor product will not sell on the Net (or at least not
for very long). And some products are just not cut out for the Web. Even a
great content Web site will not change these two stark realities.
However, there is one big difference to note... successful
online small business owners realize that product/service development is really
an extension (or “the logical next step”) to developing a Theme-Based Content
Site.
The other steps, as you can see, are radically different… as
are the results.
The top 3% that succeed on the Net build targeted,
interested traffic by providing the type of high value content that their
visitors are searching for and that the Search Engines like. These smart
business owners PREsell (“warm up” their visitors) through excellent content
about a profitable niche/theme related to the concept of their product or
service (or the ones they represent). As a result, these PREsold visitors are
more open to their sales offers and convert more quickly into enthusiastic
customers.
The 98% that fail build a Web site to sell and somehow
figure that traffic will just show up and that these visitors will be willing
to buy or hire immediately. Wrong thinking… wrong process!
The Netwriting Masters Course is not able to discuss the
whole “success” process in detail. The primary job of the Course is to show you
how to write content that PREsells (“warms up” your visitors) and then converts
your visitors into customers. “Content” covers all your online words, including
e-mails, autoresponders, newsletters, ads -- basically, every point at which
you communicate with your target market.
Before you start, however, it’s critical for you to
understand and believe the following...
Effective Netwriting is something that anyone can
accomplish…
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