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Thread: Starting an online business

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    Platinum Member Chatmaster's Avatar
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    Starting an online business

    Lately there are many self proclaimed “experts” that wants to help other people make money online by selling them their own “wonder book” or secrets to making money online.

    The process is simple…
    • Do you want to earn more than $10,000 a month of your website?
    • Are you tired of working for your boss?
    • Do you want more free time with your family?
    • Do you want to drive that fantastic new car?
    • How I made $10,000 in 1 day!
    • Do you want? Do you need? Blah, blah, blah

    Although some of these people actually gives something worthwhile reading or buying, chances are, you will be sitting with a book or course that will impress you so much and completely blow your mind away just to look in retrospect 2 years from now thinking that the Internet as a business platform is overrated, because this book you bought simply sold a perception not the hard facts.

    My intention here is to give you the hard facts.

    A tiny bit about myself…

    I personally own in access of 80 websites as an affiliate of some sorts in various industries globally and hosted with many ISP’s depending on the country I target. I then also own 11 websites through some business interests that I have locally. I have been in the online marketing game since 1998 and I have been earning money on the Internet since 2003. How much I earn? Doesn’t concern you, I am not telling you this to impress you, but simply to tell you that I know what I am talking about, take it or leave it.

    A few misperceptions you should never fall for!


    You cannot get a website up and running and make serious money with it in a single day! It is closer to more than a month (At least). The only ways that you can do it within a month is with the following methods: PPV, PPC, Viral Marketing (If you are lucky), Social Media Marketing and if you have an arsenal of existing websites. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

    You cannot become a successful online marketer by simply reading a book from one author and his “secrets”. That is the most annoying of all claims that people often fall for. You need to open your mind and mine for information from a variety of people before considering attempting the leap yourself.

    Leave your job. This is the biggest of all injustices that you can do to yourself. NEVER, I repeat, never leave your job to go on an online venture, unless your online business is earning at least twice what you are earning fulltime from your job. You cannot succeed online if you are under constant pressure, The fact is you do not need to resign to start your internet business. Manage your risks maturely, you owe it to yourself and your family!

    Do not just believe testimonials written without any form of confirmation. Just a name and a paragraph often means that the owner of the site thumb sucked the testimonials themselves. There must be photo's and links to an actual person and check those people’s websites and blogs out carefully as amongst us affiliates we often help each other out with testimonials. Almost like reciprocal linking just with testimonials.

    Never buy any ebooks explaining to you how to design a website. Website design doesn’t need to be explained as CMS systems design websites for you. I will explain this in the next topic.

    Making money online is easy! This is a load of nonsense, it is far from it. If it was that simple, 70% of the population of the US would have been millionaires. It takes hard work, dedication and skill.

    Designing a website

    You can go to Joomla right now and download your own personal website for FREE. You can even ask a host to install it for you if it is your first time to do so. They often help out. Just make sure you search for “Joomla hosting” in Google to find a host that supports Joomla. Also ensure that they are using Linux to enable you to use mod rewrite.

    After the installation simply go to Siteground (there are many others) and download a nice look and feel from their range of templates. If you can work with word, you can use Joomla. The same is true for Drupal (Just for Norio) and WordPress.

    Download Joomla tutorials and get your online business going.

    But lets talk about the online business process

    One of my many talents are project management. So I am going to make this as simple as possible. The following process are always the process that you will use when starting an online business. As in project management, you cannot skip a step or else you increase your risk of failing.

    Plan your business

    As in any business, you need to know what you want to do first. NEVER just register a domain and then design a website. You need to know where you are going with it and the website is the least of your concerns.

    Conceptualise and strategize

    It is important to conceptualise and to strategize as this would often transform your ultimate intention into a much better outcome.

    Find a product or service

    The Internet allows you to do research and base your decisions on facts rather than a gut feeling. Use this to your advantage. You can do this by using the following tools. There are other ways too but let’s stick to the basics to avoid confusion and analysis paralysis.

    Create a list of 5 keyword phrases that relates to your own interests and expertise.

    Then use these keywords to determine the ideal market by entering them in the following tools to see which are the most likely to have high demand.

    SEO Book tools (FREE) Used to determine which keywords have had the most searches for the day.

    Google Zeitgeist (FREE) A few very useful tools that you can use to determine demand by searches done on Google

    Plan your marketing strategies

    The marketing strategies will always influence your website design and must be done before a domain is registered and before you decide on a hosting company. You do not know what your website would look like until you actually know how you want to sell it.

    More next time, that is if you want more…
    Roelof Vermeulen (Entrepreneurship in large organizations)
    Roelof Vermeulen| Rock flaps south africa

  2. Thank given for this post:

    BBBEE_CompSpec (08-Nov-09), Dave A (08-Nov-09), Jannie Ruppersberg (08-Nov-09), Nono M (12-Mar-18), wynn (10-Nov-09)

  3. #2
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chatmaster View Post
    More next time, that is if you want more…
    I want more

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    I also want more!

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    Platinum Member Chatmaster's Avatar
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    OK, here is what I am planning to do. I will post a new thread for each stage I will take this through. That way everyone can discuss each individual stage and it is less confusing. I will try my best to part with some knowledge but will hopefully also learn a lot from others at the same time. I will then go through it as I have time and try to complete it as fast as possible.

    First thread is here http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...ad.php?p=28321
    Roelof Vermeulen (Entrepreneurship in large organizations)
    Roelof Vermeulen| Rock flaps south africa

  6. #5
    Platinum Member Chatmaster's Avatar
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    Let me be very honest here.

    I did consider selling this as a course to people, but decided that I will then become one of those I so despise. So hope you enjoy this series of articles and I hope that it add value to most of you.

    I am writing all of this from scratch and very little planning went into it so the articles might change as I go on.
    Roelof Vermeulen (Entrepreneurship in large organizations)
    Roelof Vermeulen| Rock flaps south africa

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    A great start, Roelof.

    Thanks for doing this.
    Last edited by Dave A; 08-Nov-09 at 06:23 PM.

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    Platinum Member Chatmaster's Avatar
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    No problem Dave, I am sure it will be fun
    Roelof Vermeulen (Entrepreneurship in large organizations)
    Roelof Vermeulen| Rock flaps south africa

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