To succeed in business you need to have passion, drive, and steadfast determination. Even when things seem to be a struggle it’s important that you knuckle down keep working hard doing what needs to be done to make things work out right in the end. But as we always say, it’s as much the journey you take as the destination you reach, so it’s important that when you start up in business you know the road you plan to take.
When you start off in business my suggestion is you should provide huge value for people in whatever it is you offer.
When I started up online I didn’t consider for one second how to start an online business. Life online for me started through blogging something that I didn’t just enjoy doing but that I found to be a sensational way to share my ideas, knowledge and experiences as a platform to make the difference for other people. It was my hobby, something to fill in time for me while I was recuperating from my eye surgery and unable to train or work in the gym.
It didn’t take to long for me to realize that this was what I wanted to be doing for the long term, I was hooked. As I progressed and found that not only was I loving everything to do with blogging it also seemed that others enjoyed what I was contributing evidenced by the growth in my traffic and the correspondence I received. This was the start of an amazing journey one which has seen me evolve from a hobby blogger to a proficient dare I say online entrepreneur.
I started to explore the internet to find the answer how to start an online business. I now had a well visited blog, was active in social networking, but had no revenue sources and little idea where to start. What I soon discovered was that I wasn’t alone looking for this answer. It seems everyone online has a dream of making money online. Alas so many of them seem to go down the wrong path, easily done with the multitude of crap information you will find. It’s like a maze, so many areas to monetize your blogs but in truth so few work really well. What you actually discover is that most who find how to make money online keep it to themselves for fear of others being able to learn and then compete against them.
I stumbled along trying different ways for myself. I failed many times. But by failure I simply mean I found ways that could absorb plenty of time but would not reward me financially. So I simply moved on to try something different. That’s the great thing, there are so many opportunities available, so much we can try, but the hard thing is to find what really works.
In this blog I intend providing you with what I believe is the best way to build for yourself a secure bright future online. Feel free to read on because I’m not going to be trying to trap you into buying a course, or an eBook, nothing like that. I’m not even going to give you a link to my shops. Why would I, they have nothing to do with what I’m writing about. This is my personal blog, and my opportunity to give something back into the world of blogging, the place I feel that I have come from. If you get value from what I write then you can share it in your social network and that is all I ask of you.
The Internet makes it possible to set up a business that can do business with the whole wide world, and sell almost anything. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can build an online business. Success of course is not guaranteed.
Alas it can become a very dirty business, virtually dog eat dog. Today let me talk a little about a place where we make a good monthly income from. I’m talking about Amazon. This can be a great place for you to start trading. Build up your experience of selling products and servicing customers. It has grown into virtually a worldwide shopping mall where you can find whatever you are looking for. Consumers feel safe buying in Amazon and so sellers who do things right can build a very good business. But be warned. When you do succeed, making money others will see this, jealousy will rear its head and unscrupulous people will try and copy everything you do.
If you find a product that you believe in and that you believe can help change lives then you should take it to Amazon. Being a healthy lifestyle blogger it was natural I would find products that were perfect for me to sell. At first it was quality life changing supplements. I wouldn’t sell anything that I didn’t believe in and I was fortunate to find my way to the Proto-col range, thanks to Darren Rhodes an old friend.
When you do it’s important that you create a fantastic page for it, get a brilliant description, use accurate but searched for keywords and then let Amazon do the rest. This is what we did. We introduced a product to their marketplace, and saw our sales increase month by month. You will never have things to yourself for long. 6 months later others followed and began selling on our product through our page. This was fine, by now we had many other products growing our revenue and we were no longer a one product company. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t protect what’s yours. We certainty did, particularly because one of our so called competitors was doing things that wasn’t acceptable on amazon such as duplicating listings, and cutting prices below recommended retail prices in an attempt to win what’s called the buy box. We actually hold our own very nicely, and considering Amazon now is only a tiny part of our business we smile to ourselves how others are obviously working so hard to just keep up to us. They see us as the market leaders and they want to take some of our business. We will let them keep trying, and while they do we’ll just be innovative and keep building new and better things.
There is the key to why we are successful both on amazon and in the other areas we work. We are innovative, we try to be different, trying new things all the time. We don’t just copy what others are doing.
My next post, I’ll talk about how we started on our ecommerce trail, and where that’s taken us.
