June 5, 2008

The Importance Of Choosing A Business Model That Excites You!

Last week I spoke about the importance of registering your own domain name and hosting your website using a paid hosting provider.

These 2 tools are an essential part to running your own online business.

Unfortunately I started at the wrong point of my ‘Back to Basics’ series and forgot to mention, possibly the most important decision of all.

Before you invest in a domain name and hosting you’ve got to decide how you intend to make money online.

You need to decide what method you want to use and what topic or market you want to build your business around.

Choosing A Business Model

Choosing the right business model/vehicle/method/technique/money making idea (you get the point!) is so important and can honestly make or break your fledgling, internet business.

Now, as I’ve mentioned in past posts, there are several different methods to make money online, such as:

Ebay

Affiliate Marketing

Selling Information Products

Adsense

PPC

Membership Sites

Blogging

Selling Physical Products

You can make a full time living with any of these methods if you work hard enough. But the chances are you won’t if you’re not 100% committed to the particular method you decide upon.

The methods I’ve listed above are vastly different and you really need to spend some time learning what each one entails and what exactly you’ll need to do to make money with it.

They all have their pros and cons and all have similarities. You just need to decide which one fits around your particular style of working.

Research

Once you decide upon a particular method it’s time to do some serious research!

You need to learn as much as you can before launching into your online business.

Keep a swipe file both online and offline of good websites that teach you about the method you choose.

Find out who the experts are and what they offer in the way of help and advice. Contact them to see if you can establish some sort of relationship with them.

Download as much free information as you can.

Look to join at least 1 forum on your chosen method. Often you’ll get a good idea as to how other newbie’s are doing and learn from their experiences.

The importance of deciding how you would like to make money online cannot be emphasized enough. Once you’ve made that decision you have to block every other money making idea that you’ll be bombarded with every single day.

Spend a couple of days if necessary learning about your chosen business model. When you are happy with your vehicle of choice, it’s time to choose a topic and/or a product that you want to sell.

For this ‘Back to Basics’ series I am going to concentrate on the one method that I myself do the majority of time – selling information products.

I personally believe that selling information products is the absolute best possible business to have online.

And selling your own information products is where you will make the most amount of money – period.

Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow

I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase many times before. But it’s so true. If you run an online business around a subject you are really interested in and know a lot about, it will clearly show in your web content, in your emails, in your customer support and all aspects of your business.

Equally the opposite will happen if you choose a topic that you aren’t really interested in and only chose it because someone suggested you could make loads of money with it.

Sure some methods and markets will make you some short term money, but you’re goal is to establish a successful, long term, sustainable business.

And the only way you’re going to do that is by running a business you enjoy working on day in, day out.

If you do decide to go after the quick money, the chances are you’ll get bored very quickly and it becomes very difficult to keep going if you lose interest when the going gets tough. You won’t complete the project and you’ll end up not making any money. (Trust me, I’ve been there and it’s soul destroying).

You need to decide what topic or market interests you the most.

Only you will know what that can be and it’s worth spending a few hours brainstorming as many potential ideas as possible.

Write everything down that interests you and you have some knowledge about. There is nothing new to this technique, but it is tried and tested and still taught by the top internet marketing gurus today.

It’s a method that works and often the simplest ones are the best.

If after exhausting all your hobbies, interests, skills, abilities, talents etc. you still can’t think of anything that you could market, go to your biggest store that sells magazines and choose a topic form there.

Just make sure you choose a subject that really excites you and one that you’ll be happy to spend most of your online business time working on.

Before I go any further I want to emphasize that you don’t have to be a complete newbie to start an internet business.

If you are already running an online business full time or part time and aren’t making the sort of money you hoped you would, it’s not too late to start again.

There’s no reason why you can’t take your already gained knowledge and apply it to a new, enjoyable and exciting business.

Sometimes starting ‘a fresh’ and building a new business from scratch relieves you from the stress and worry of a poorly performing business that your heart isn’t in anymore.

I’m not advocating jumping ship just because it gets a little tough. I’m just saying it may be time to evaluate how your business is actually doing and whether or not it’s worth sticking with, or trying something new that you know you’re going to enjoy working on.

So at the end of your brainstorming session you should have a long list of ideas that you could create a product from.

Take the best 3 with 2 more in reserve. These will be the topics to investigate further.

My next post will show you how to research your best topics/ideas and decide if they have the potential to become a sought after information product and ultimately produce a recurring income.

There are no resources to recommend today. No websites to look at or reports to download. Today’s post is all about making important choices.

Just remember … “Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow”

~ Peter Tremayne

Filed under Blog, Internet Marketing by Peter Tremayne