Keep Your Dream Simple (Part 5)
Where do I even start? This online business stuff is so frustrating, there’s so much information, what do I do first? When I started my online business in 2011, I did about 100 different things that I thought would make me money but most didn’t.
Things really didn’t happen for me until the middle of 2012, that’s when I simplified things. I stopped trying to do everything I heard or read and just stuck to the basics: create an amazing home base, get people to that home base and give them value and useful/useable content, sell a few premium offerings that will give them specific results.
Since then, the business has been building, sometimes I feel like one person at a time. If you’re just starting out or have been trying your hand at this online thing for a while, it might be time to simplify and make sure your basics are tiptop.
A little review
We started this series talking about one of the most important things online: finding your target audience. If you’re going to be successful, you have to figure out who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about. Once you get specific, you can figure out where they’re at online and how you can help them.
Then we talked about the basics of a good website. One of the most important aspects being building your email list and having it front and center.
We moved on to talk about building an audience through things like guest post, interviews. SEO and other strategies work but those are more longer term strategies, guest posting gets you exposed to a larger audience quicker.
In this series I’ve hit most of the basics, the goal being to give you the tools you need to make your online dreams a reality. More specifically, if you’re a family person that has a day job and is doing this on the side, my passion is to help make your thing support your family.
Making money
So we’ve covered the basics, once you have those set and solid, it’s time to think about making a little money and building upon that. Where to start??
If you took time in the beginning, you’ll know your target audience. When figuring out what to create to sell, that information should come from the pain points of your target audience.
Knowing your target audience means helping them get through something. If you talk to newlyweds, you could create “The guide to your first week of marriage” where you tell newlyweds everything they need to know and some things they didn’t think about during that first week.
If you’re talking about exercise, you could create an online course on how to develop the ultimate lifting routine. You get it. If you don’t know what the pain points are of your target audience, ask them.
When you’re thinking about creating your premium stuff, your products and services, the normal tendency is to create things you think your audience wants. Instead of guessing (those guesses are wrong more often than not) send out an email to your email list, ask any social media groups you’re a part of.
Get the info and create from that, you’ll then be creating things your target audience can actually use and will actually help them, of course they’ll buy!
Ways to monetize
I’ll be doing whole posts on all of these topics but there are a bunch of ways to monetize. Again, knowing what your target audience likes will help you figure out what to create first.
Most of the time the first thing you can create to start seeing income right away is a guide. Maybe a series of blog posts combined with some fresh research and information turned into a guide. A guide being a PDF with a nice cover but incredible content, usually 15 to 20 pages.
You upload that to a site like E-Junkie and bam, you’ve got your first premium offering. Again, please don’t throw something together, create something useful that gets a specific result for your target audience.
There are some great books that can really help you when it comes to thinking about business and monetizing. If you’re going to offer Services, then you should read “Book Yourself Solid” by Michael Port. For your business in general, you should read “Business in Blue Jeans” by Susan Baroncini-Moe. For creating premium products and different ways to monetize your online business, “The Millionaire Messenger” by Brendon Burchard. These books are must reads for really making this thing support you.
You can do this
I just scratched the surface with this series, as the year goes on I’ll get super specific, with details and numbers from my business, the successes and the failures. My hope is that you see you can do this and have it eventually support you.
I’m devoting this year to helping you the family person, start this on the side, build it to support your family without ruining what you have and of course I’ll be with you every step of the way 
What is your online and what is your goal for 2014?
