7 Ways to Get Better Results From Your Online Business

In case you haven’t noticed, there are a TON of people online talking about the same things. Building an online business isn’t easy, and there are some hard realities you need to realize CopyBlogger tells us.

I know I’m not telling you anything new. Having said that, I LOVE the freedom an online business can provide. Look at the picture. I’m writing this post from a Starbucks that’s one block away from the ocean.

While I’m writing this, people are buying my books and other products on my website. I’m making money passively while enjoying the amazingness of Maui. If this is your dream, there are seven things you can do that will help your online business get better results.

1. Stop copying other people

I have written a lot about this topic so I won’t bore you. What I will say is that people buy from someone they know, like, and trust. They don’t buy from strangers.

If you are the clone of someone else, they’ll never get to know the real you. When they want to buy, they will buy from the person you are copying. Use frameworks that work, but don’t be a clone. Let your voice come through, and build a business that’s yours.

 2.  Be very clear about who you serve

If you try to reach the whole world, you’ll end up reaching no one because your efforts to reach them will be too scattered. You won’t be able to dig deeper, and help people where they are if you’re not speaking to a specific target audience.

The more specific you can get with your target audience, the easier time you’ll have marketing, which is what ultimately grows your business. When you do, all the strategy stuff like guest posting for example, you’ll know exactly where you should be focused.

There are specific issues going on with specific people. Men have their own issues and women have their’s. There are many issues, which we all deal with in life, but in different ways. To really reach your audience, you have to deal with those issues in a way that affects them.

 3.  Keep it simple  

Keep your website simple and clean. Even though WordPress has a ton of options for widgets and plugins, you don’t need ALL of them. When someone visits your website it shouldn’t confuse them.

When it comes to your business, keep it simple too. Build traffic to your website. Learn the biggest struggles your target audience is facing. Create products and services that help solve those problems. Rinse and repeat. Yes it can be that simple.

 4.  Don’t rely too heavily on social media

While you can’t ignore social media, you can’t make it your number one strategy for traffic and leads. New York Times best-selling author, Crystal Paine, clearly illustrates this.

I wrote about how social media marketing is overrated for Entrepreneur magazine. We need it to a point, but there’s better ways to build your online business. The bottom line is you want to build your business on your platform, not someone else’s. You want people to be sign up to your email list and interact with you personally.

 5.  Focus on what’s important to where you are

There’s a ton of things you CAN learn online. Most of these things aren’t important to where you are in the process. If you’re building, you probably shouldn’t be learning about SEO.

If you guest post, and build your audience in other ways, the SEO will naturally come, so your time is better spent writing guest posts. Sit down, and evaluate where you’re at in YOUR journey, and stick to what will help you where you are.

Don’t fall victim to information overload because it can easily keep you from making progress. Speed of implementation is what makes you successful in this business.

 6.  Don’t be afraid to charge a fair price  

It would be great to help as many people as possible for free, but you have a family and bills to pay. If you create something that adds value and helps people, you should have no shame charging a fair price.

Remember, you’re building a business; it can’t be a business if it doesn’t make money. If what you’re doing is a non-profit, that’s something completely different. If you’re building something that supports your family, treat this as a business.

There are people online that should be ashamed at what they’re doing and charging, but you’ll find that in any industry. As long as you focus on serving, and adding value to people’s lives, your prices will be justified.

 7.  Keep hustling

At the end of the day, if you want this to work and build, you have to determine right now that you’ll keep going no matter what. Perseverance is what makes your dream a reality.

Even if you haven’t made the process you wanted to make at this point, you can’t give up. Build this business one relationship, and one sell at a time. Keep guest posting, keep doing the things it takes to create freedom.

Have patience. This takes time to build. With focused effort you can build an online business that supports your family in one year as long as you keep hustling.

Use these seven things to optimize your building efforts. Have patience, and build something that helps your target audience. Focus and you will do this. Think about what you can do this week that helps build your online business.

Which one of these do you need to work on?

This week’s articles:

Listen and Learn From These 9 Emerging Entrepreneurial Podcasts (I’m really proud of this one)

Entrepreneur Magazine

5 Ways Negative People Are Keeping You From Your Dream Life

Mind Body Green

5 Ways Social Media Marketing Is Overrated

The Huffington Post

7 Lessons Quitting a Job I Hated Taught Me About Life

The Good Men Project