How to Start Your Own Online Business – An Insider’s Guide

As a beginner or newbie, you can start your own online business successfully with little investment, determination and persistence using this insider’s guide. As a matter of fact, aspiring entrepreneurs are having aha moment daily by taking the bull by the horns to start a business on the internet.

 

There are no hard and fast rules to success for anyone starting an online business. What you require to succeed is a dose of consistency, passion, hard work, viable business idea and a target audience to serve. I’m going to walk you through the steps to successfully make your entrepreneurial journey eventful.

 

Step #1: Position Yourself as an Entrepreneur

 

I guess your goal to start an online business is to make money. This is a good idea and there is nothing wrong with that desire at all! But do you know that for you to earn money online or offline, you’ve to be a problem solver or solution provider for any target market who has a problem to solve and is willing to pay for it?    

 

If you want to make money on the internet into the foreseeable future, your greatest challenge is how to identify problems or pain points in the marketplace and provide solutions to solve them. So, your first task is to hone market research and keyword research skills which will help you discover the needs and wants of any target audience.

 

If you know what your potential customers’ needs or wants are, you should be able to find a way to be of help to them and you’ll get rewarded in the end through any suitable monetization methods available to you.

 

So, as an entrepreneur, your primary job is to research pain points in the market before thinking of how to make money online.   

 

Step #2: Position Yourself as an Expert

 

From day one of starting an online business, begin to work and build on your expertise status. People buy from who they know, like and trust and it all boils down to the expertise of the vendor, merchant or seller of a product or service. There is no sentiment in buying and selling in business but rather it is the exchange of value between parties.

 

When it comes to business, nobody wants to throw money away just like that. It’s about making profits and more of it when the goods are delivered. If you’re an expert on a subject, topic or field, it makes it easier for you to promote any product or service and close sales seamlessly.

 

It doesn’t matter what entrepreneurial hat you’re wearing; you can make money as an expert if you’re strategic in product delivery. As a blogger, webmaster, product creator, content creator, etc, becoming an expert in your field is what will make the difference and stand you out from the competition.

 

You’ve to read up books, be abreast of industry news and trends always, sign up with relevant online courses or get a coach to become who you want to be. It helps!

 

Don’t forget that Rome was not built in a day. You’ve to start from somewhere to get to your desired destination. As a beginner you’ve what it takes to start your own online business and still be successful. All you need is to learn the ropes while you build your online business from the ground up.

 

You can research existing experts in your field and sign up for their business newsletters. Continue to look over their shoulders and get viable online business ideas you can start working on in earnest.

 

Learn from different ways they promote their blogs, websites, products and services to their target audience and practice it. As far as I know, you can never know enough of anything. There is always room for learning, improvements and perfection.

 

Step #3: Determine Your Ideal Target Audience

 

If you’re an expert or entrepreneur in your field and you don’t have reasonable number of people to serve in the marketplace, you’ll not make money to break even. It’s as simple as that! This is why patience is required for you to start and grow an online business profitably.

 

You should not be carried away with disruptive and consistent advertisements of get rich quick schemes flying all over the internet. It doesn’t work while some are just one-hit wonder. And the best way to discover a target audience with pain points is to create a blog and set up an email marketing system which will enable you to build an email list of subscribers from scratch.

 

From this point, you’ll continue to nurture your leads, ask questions, take surveys and send out questionnaires to know what your target market wants. If you have 10,000 subscribers who want you to create a digital product on a topic which you’re an expert, you’re good to go.

 

You can also take it a step further by creating buyer persona so that you’ll know the content to create and publish to gain traction to your website, get authority, create brand awareness, generate leads and close sales as the case may be.

 

Step #4: Create a Blog Website

 

There is no shortcut to this if you want to start your own online business for the long term and make money. You’ve to invest money to start a blog and grow it to an enviable height. Your blog website will stand as your business office on the World Wide Web.

You’ll have a regular platform where you can consistently publish content and interact with your target market, get feedback and opinions about business information which may be critical to your success.

 

For you to start a blog and make money, you need to register a domain name and buy web hosting. This will cost you less than $200 for three years of shared hosting from a reputable website hosting company. You can download and read up my ebook on how to create a blog and make money using my recommended cheap web hosting provider to get started.

 

Step #5: Be Generous with Quality Content

 

As you know, content is king on the internet. And being generous with content pays great dividends in the end. The law of reciprocity works like charm on the World Wide Web. I’ve helped a lot of people to start their own online business by publishing high quality content and I got rewarded in one way or another.

 

If you want to leap and not limp in your internet business, create and publish unique content consistently to attract your ideal clients, readers, followers and fans. You cannot be a stingy entrepreneur and expect to make passive income online.

 

Step #6: Decide on an Online Business Model to Adopt

 

There are over 101 online business models that exist. Broadly, you can:

 

1. Create a digital product and sell it online,
2. Provide freelance services of any kind based on your expertise, or
3. Everything in between. 

 

For example, if you own a blog website with lots of unique content, you can promote affiliate products and services and earn affiliate commissions. Also, you may write an ebook, monetize it with affiliate links to complementary products and start giving it away for free.

 

Obviously, starting an online business successfully requires hard work, smart work, consistency and persistence upfront but the pay-off can astounding. Whether this is your side hustle or work from home business, you’ll succeed at it if you know what you’re doing.

 

Step #7: Promote, Promote and Promote Your Business

 

No matter the type of business you run on the internet, you’ve to regularly promote it to get results. If you don’t advertise your business, people will not know it exists. This is why you’ve to learn some digital skills to reduce the cost of running an internet business.

 

As an online business owner, you’ve to hone search engine optimization (SEO), digital marketing, keyword research and list building skills at the barest minimum. You must understand that online marketing is an ongoing task that must be executed.

 

Having a unique product or service to sell is not enough in this digital age. With easy access to social media platforms, you’ve what it takes to promote your website, blog or brand.

 

Some of the digital marketing channels you should look into include:

 

• Social media marketing
• Video marketing
• Blogging and content marketing
• Guest posting
• Search engine marketing
• Etc

 

In conclusion, you should be able to consistently position, package and promote your product or service to your target niche market if you hope to start your own online business and make money from home.

Ebook Marketing Guide for Bloggers, Authors and Content Writers

Although video marketing is gaining huge popularity on the internet by the day, the benefits of ebook marketing cannot be underrated. With a solid ebook promotion strategy in place, you can successfully and consistently generate targeted leads and prospects as well as close sales by leaps and bounds.

 

Whether you’re a blogger, author or content writer, you can create an ebook and take advantage of the content needs and gaps in the marketplace by providing your expert knowledge on a specific topic which will serve as the solution to what your target niche market is searching for.

 

The good news is that your electronic book (e-book for short) which you’ve created and uploaded on a web hosting server can be downloaded by anyone who has the link and access to it at any time of the day. For years to come, you’ll be able to use your published ebook online to reach out to your potential leads and/or retain customers in the industry where you are operating from.

 

For example, you can write an ebook on 31 side hustles to make money online. You can then give this ebook away for free to your prospects or readers with or without an opt-in form to fill out. Your goal may be to use the ebook to directly generate affiliate products sales or any other marketing goal you may have in mind.

But the take home here is a watertight ebook marketing campaign can considerably improve the bottom line of your business if done right.

 

Establish Your Ebook Marketing Goal

 

To get started, you’ve to establish your ebook marketing goal. As an author or writer, you’ve to begin with the end in mind. What do you hope to achieve with your ebook marketing campaign? Do you want to create brand awareness for your business? Do you want to generate leads through list building? Clearly bearing your goal in mind will help you to be laser focused on what to do.

 

For example, I may decide to write an ebook on 31 online side hustles to make money from home to help aspiring entrepreneurs with day jobs to start a business on the internet. This type of goal must consider the time constraints of day jobbers. Any side hustle business that will be included in this list must not take the whole day to accomplish.  

 

Design Buyer Persona for Your Ebook

 

Creating buyer persona for your ebook will make it easy to understand who your ideal readers are. Your goal is to appeal to a specific segment in the marketplace. Is your electronic book targeted at beginners, intermediate or advanced readers?

 

The demography of your potential prospects or customers must be clearly stated to avoid wasted efforts in your ebook marketing campaign. You should bear in mind that the buyer persona you’re creating is something more than just the profile of your ideal customer or reader.

 

Write Your Ebook

 

I’ve extensively discussed how to write an ebook in part one and part two which I published in my previous blog posts. You can read it up from the above links to get the lowdown on writing and selling ebooks online.

 

Create Ebook Marketing Plan

Now that you’ve created an ebook to sell or give away as a gift, it’s time to go to the drawing board to create a marketing plan to distribute it to your target readers. The idea is to reach as many people as possible who are interested in downloading it.

 

Firstly, draw up a list of websites that accept and allow PDF file sharing. Secondly, pencil down the category to upload your PDF in each of these websites.

 

Publish and Distribute Your Ebook

 

With a handy book marketing plan, you can go ahead to publish and distribute your electronic book to various sites especially if you’re using the ebook to create brand awareness, build trust and credibility or demonstrate authority or thought leadership on a topic or subject matter.

 

Some of the PDF file sharing sites include SlideShare.net, ISSUU.com, just to name a few.

 

 Promote Your Ebook

 

It’s not just enough to distribute your ebook to various websites and sit back to expect hordes of visitors to your blog or landing page. You’ve to go out of your way to use content marketing to create buzz about your ebook.

 

This is where you’ve to consistently blow your trumpet to your target audience. Let them know that your book is available to download after payment or exchange of email address if you’re building an email list of subscribers.

 

Measure, Analyze and Improve

 

You’ve to measure and analyze your return on marketing campaign so that you can improve in your future efforts. Making use of data analytics as early as possible will be helpful in this regard. Google Analytics and Googe Search Console are free tools to use.

The Ultimate Guide to Website Flipping for Beginners

Website flipping is one of the best side hustles to make money online and it can provide you with the opportunity to learn digital marketing inside out as well if you’re an active website flipper. This online business opportunity is a step ahead of domain flipping and you can do both concurrently if you’re willing to work smarter.

 

In this guide, you’ll discover how to buy and sell websites for profit. This online business model is commonly referred to as virtual real estate (VRE) investing because it is similar in many respects to the physical real estate business. However, there are many factors which you’ve to consider when you want to sell your website without getting disappointed in the end.

 

Many years ago, I enrolled in several courses both on domain investing and website investing to have an inside scoop of how it works. To tell you the truth, the profit potential of flipping domain names and websites can be astounding.

 

You can build a website from scratch or simply buy a website for sale from the marketplace and sell it for profit later. Either way, you’ll make profit if you can improve the earning capacity of the site and prove to your potential buyer what he stands to gain after he has acquired the web property from you.

 

This is why, as a flipper, you’ve to take note of everything about your website including analytics, assets, costs incurred, time spent, etc which can be associated with the web site as you manage and maintain it before you decide to sell.

 

For simplicity, you’ve to picture a domain name as the bare land on the web where you can build a website or create a blog while the website or blog itself is the house which you’ve to build on the domain.

 

If you own a good domain name and it is in a good location or neighborhood (i.e. niche or industry), you can make tidy sum of money from selling the domain alone without even building a website on it.

 

However, if you’re able to improve on the fortunes of your domain by creating a website on it, you can command more money when you decide to flip the website with the domain. Like I said before, there are several variables which will make a website or blog to become more valuable to a potential buyer to acquire.

 

For a valuable domain name, you’ve to look at the following characteristics or factors:

 

• Length of the domain in characters and words. The shorter, the better!
• Age of the domain
• Passes the radio test
• Not prone to misspelling
• Easy to remember
• Easy to pronounce
• No trademark infringement
• Memorable
• Pronounceable
• Keyword targeted
• No hyphen or numbers
• Distinctive or brandable
• In high paying niche or industry
• Trending or evergreen
• Etc

 

For a website for sale to become valuable to any potential buyer, it must possess digital assets that can be utilized to produce more income when the new owner decides to tweak or makeover the site.

 

Some of these business assets include:

 

• Average monthly revenue and profits of the site
• Age of the website domain
• Authority backlinks to the website
• Targeted email list of subscribers
• Dynamic and aesthetic design or theme of the website
• Search engine rankings of targeted keywords and phrases
• Volume of unique and high-quality content published
• Owned but transferable website licenses, apps and software
• On-page search engine optimization (SEO) and internal linking structure
• Reliable website analytics and metrics to evaluate traffic sources and variables
• The growth potentials of the website
• Domain authority
• Etc

 

With that said, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of website flipping business.

 

What is Website Flipping?

 

Website flipping is buying and selling of websites for profit usually at arm’s length transaction. You can build a website or create a blog from scratch, optimize it for SEO (search engine optimization), regularly publish high-quality content on it, monetize the website, drive targeted traffic to it, consistently make money online from the site for any reasonable number of months or years, and sell it off for a lump sum to a willing and able buyer.

 

The business idea here is to consistently make money with the website and make it profitable before you sell it to the new owner. On the other hand, you can also research websites for sale in popular marketplaces like Flippa.com and in a preferable niche market of your choice, buy and revamp it to improve its earnings before you resell at a profit.

 

Flipping websites successfully comes with skillsets and practice over time. And the best way to get good at it is to create a blog website from scratch and scale it up to become a profitable asset to any investor who is ready to purchase such website business.

 

Personally, this online business opportunity of creating a blog website from scratch has helped me to learn digital marketing while trying to promote my blog to sell later down the road. As it were, I may use this blog site as another case study to demonstrate to beginners how to flip websites for profit if I decide to sell it.

 

Places to Buy and/or Sell Your Websites

 

There are several marketplaces to sell a website and make money on the internet. But the most popular sites I’m familiar with are:

 

1. Flippa.com
2. EmpireFlippers.com
3. MotionInvest.com

 

For you to sell your website or blog quickly, work on these three (3) major things:

 

1. Consistently increase free targeted traffic to your website especially from search engines with on-page and off-page SEO duly taken care of,
2. Grow the average monthly revenue and profits, and
3. Publish consistent and high volume of unique and high-quality content on your blog website.

 

I’ve seen a lot of site flippers selling starter or turnkey websites successfully. What is usually included in these starter websites are registered domain name, web hosting set up, nice-looking website template or dynamic blog theme, and high volume of content ready to be monetized.

 

It all depends on the strategy you wish to adopt in your site flipping journey. As a beginner, it’s highly recommended that you start a blog and make money from it to learn how to drive free targeted traffic from search engines. Website investors usually prefer web properties with search engine traffic as the major source of visitors.

 

This website flipping strategy will help you to know what to look out for in a site when you are ready to buy and flip from the open marketplaces.

 

For you to create a blog and make money from it, all you’ve to do to get started is register a domain name and purchase web hosting from a reliable company that supports WordPress hosting. The ongoing tasks are regularly creating and publishing content optimized for SEO, monetizing and then driving free search traffic to your website.

 

Website flipping for beginners is not rocket science but common sense. You can sign up with marketplaces where people regularly buy and sell websites daily. Continue to observe and analyze websites that were sold and why it sold. It will help you to figure out exactly what potential buyers look out for in a website or blog before they bid and buy.

 

Also, if you build a blog from the beginning and take care of everything including on-page SEO, internal linking structure, link building, monetizing your blog, building an email list, blog promotion, and so on, you’ll have hands-on experience on key metrics to focus on which are crucial to fast blog or site sale.

 

Flipping websites is interesting if your site has been consistently earning monthly net profits (not necessarily revenue) for six (6) months and above and still growing. This is because ROI (return on investment) is an important factor for buyers to consider when investing in a website.

 

Website Valuation Methods

 

There are various metrics website buyers put into consideration to value a website you want to sell. Personally, I focus on generating consistent monthly net profits especially from affiliate marketing, Google AdSense, digital products sales, etc for at least 6 months.

 

With this consistent income, I can comfortably value the site at 30X to 40X its net profits. So, for a site generating $350 per month in net profits, holding all other factors constant, you can expect to sell it between $10,500 and $14,000.

 

You’ll be able to command more money from your website sale if you own an email list, have apps and software licenses that are transferable, good and optimized website template or blog theme, ranking on SERP (search engine results page) for money keywords, and so on.

 

Build a Website Versus Buy a Website

 

For me, I’m more comfortable building a website or starting a blog from scratch and selling it. Because you cannot be diligent enough to scrutinize and evaluate a website for sale before you buy, many investors have got their fingers burnt by investing in dud website businesses.  

 

But as your experience grows, you’ll be able to sift the chaff from the wheat in the marketplaces. It takes time, patience, experience and practice to get it right. There are websites you’ll buy and before you know it, all the sources of traffic will dry up.

 

In conclusion, you can hustle and earn online from home with website flipping business if you’re willing to do the work.

Ultimate Guide to Domain Flipping for Beginners

Domain flipping is one of the best side hustles to make money online and this is for a reason. Starting an online business requires you as an entrepreneur to register a domain name and buy web hosting as the barest minimum investment. With your own domain name and website hosting, you can build a website or start a blog to promote your business locally and globally.

 

And because domain name registration is on first come first serve basis, holding all other factors constant, you may not be smart or lucky enough to get the exact domain name you desire to brand your business when you are starting out.

 

To this end, trading in domain names has become a huge money-making industry of sorts to discerning investors. Every now and then, you’ll come across domain aftermarkets where inventory of thousands to millions of names is listed for sale at prices you cannot fathom.

 

The question is, “Why is it so?” This is because business owners who want to grow their brands and project strong online presence are willing to invest tidy sum of money to buy a domain name which is specific to their business.

 

In this ultimate guide to domain flipping for beginners, I’m going to spill the beans on how to make money buying and selling domain names for profit. With as little as $10, you can buy a domain and sell it for quick cash. All you need is the requisite knowledge to pick up a quality domain name that ticks all the dots for a quick cash sale.

 

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through all the steps to research and get a domain name worth selling for cash. There is nothing complicated about buying and selling domain names on the World Wide Web. What you really need is the patience to research a good domain name with lots of potential buyers in sight before you step your foot at the door.

 

While it’s true that you can make money with domain names, it’s never a get rich quick scheme. Domain investing must be strategic for you to be able to turn it to a full-time side hustle business and make profit. In other words, you want to buy a domain name and quickly reach out to potential leads who are willing and able to pay premium money to own it as soon as possible.

 

Domaining is like digging the treasure trove to find precious gold. Imagine purchasing a domain for about $10 to $100 and selling it for $1000 or more within a period of 12 months without doing any grunt work other than listing it at secondary marketplaces like Atom.com, Dan.com, Afternic.com or GoDaddy.com!

 

A lot of domainers are making money online from domain name business investments on daily basis. But for you to be successful at domain investing, you’ve to hone strong digital marketing skills to identify real potential buyers in advance, have requisite business tools to work with, have gut feeling to know a domain worth buying and the creativity and foresight to spot diamonds in the rough besides setting aside reasonable amount of budget to get started.

 

But if you’re starting on a shoestring budget, setting aside between $50 and $100 cash investment will be okay to buy your first batch of domains of about 3 to 5. But the higher the budget, the better for you to turn in profits quickly as you’ll be able to leverage several sources to get premium domain names to resell for profit as quickly as possible.

 

For example, if you’ve starting budget of $1000, you’ll be able to tap into several marketplaces such as domain auctions, closeouts, backorder services and aftermarkets to source for and buy cheap but high-quality domain names you can quickly resell at a profit. This is one of the best ways to earn and thrive in this ever-competitive domain business.

 

With that said, let’s dive in!

 

Types of Domains for Sale

 

Depending on your research and conviction to register a domain, there are different variants of domains for sale which your potential buyers will find valuable. The most important factor before investing in a domain name is the value which your potential buyers will derive from your sale. What value will it bring to the table of any intending buyer?

 

If you cannot attach any value to your virtual real estate you intend to purchase, there is no reason to buy it in the first place. This is because it will be difficult for you to pitch, convince and sell such domain to any reachable entrepreneur who you may contact during your outbound marketing if need be.

 

In this blueprint, I’ll discuss domain for sale types which you can have success with.

 

• Brandable domain names
• Exact match domain (EMD)
• Geo + keyword domains
• Keyword + descriptive prefix or suffix

 

Brandable Domain Names

 

This type of name has to do with creativity and ability of a domainer to combine English words or letters to form a unique brand business name. For example, Google.com, YouTube.com and Facebook.com are brandable domain names. The creative word combination is unique and compelling. If you ask me what has “face” got to do with “book” in the Facebook domain name, I’ll not be able to give you a straightforward answer.

 

But selling brandable domains is slow and can tie down a lot of capital. You may hold your inventory for years before finding a buyer. The worst part is that it’s difficult to know exactly who your potential buyers are at the beginning of researching leads and prospects to market your domain for sale to.

 

In any case, you can focus on a niche per time which will make it easy for you to come up with viable domain name ideas to register or buy for reselling at a profit. Atom.com (formerlySquadhelp.com) is one of the best marketplaces to buy brandable domain names.

 

Exact Match Domain (EMD)

 

EMD is an exact keyword phrase registered as a website domain in the order it is being searched for online by users. For instance, “small business ideas” is a keyword phrase which internet users search for on monthly basis. Now, if you own the domain name, SmallBusinessIdeas.com, you’ve an exact match domain in your portfolio.

 

An easy way to get EMD is by using keyword tools such a Google Keyword Planner. However, a valuable EMD is one that has a lot of monthly search volume, high CPC (cost per click) and competition in mostly high-paying niches such as insurance, finance, technology, etc.

 

What if you own BabyShower.com? I can bet you that manufacturers and entrepreneurs will beat a path to your doorstep to buy it from you. The type-in traffic factor and search engine optimization (SEO) benefits of an exact match domain (EMD) make it highly valuable to entrepreneurs and investors alike. You can play around with keyword research tools to find valuable EMDs that are available to register or make use of ExpiredDomains.net to get some expired domains to buy at mere registration cost.

 

Geo + Keyword Domains

 

These are geographically oriented domain names. A dentist in New York can buy NewYorkDentist.com from you if you own it without batting an eyelid. Keywords related to services or products are highly marketable when combined with geographic locations.

 

As is always the case, expensive niches or services will command more money than the others when you’re selling domains associated with geographic locations.

 

Keyword + Descriptive Prefix or Suffix

 

As a domain investor, there are good keywords or phrases worth investing in at any day or time. It could be trending keywords or emerging technology. Let’s say you cannot afford to buy Business.com as a domain name to sell later. You can append a suffix like “hub” to the “business” keyword and then come up with BusinessHub.com to sell.

 

Some years back, I registered PassiveIncomeHub.com and sold it for quick cash of $260 as I could not lay my hands on PassiveIncome.com. All I did was to add the suffix “hub” to “passive income” keyword and I received an inbound offer to sell it.

 

In this case, you’ve to keep a file of common and valuable prefixes, suffixes or stop words which you can append to good keywords such as hub, joy, pro, center, base, etc.

 

How to Identify Valuable Domain Name

 

The characteristics of a good domain name make it valuable when it comes to selling. The more characteristics a domain name has, the merrier and valuable it is.  As a domain flipper, you’ve to intuitively consider and evaluate all these factors in a domain when thinking of investing in a name to sell for profit.

 

Some of these characteristics include age of domain, quality backlinks, length of domain, brandable, target keyword, commercial viability, memorable, free from trademark infringement, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, easy to remember, not hyphenated, passes radio test, distinctive, etc.

 

With experience and practice, you’ll be able to stack these qualities together when evaluating a domain name to buy before investing in it in a jiffy. For you to be on a speed lane, develop the habit of regularly checking out domains sold reports published online at NameBio.com, DNJournal.com/domainsales.htm, Domaining.com, etc.

 

How to Buy Low and Sell High

 

The first step to quickly sell your domain is to buy something that will appeal to a lot of prospects and leads in terms of brand value it projects, SEO benefits, keyword targeted, etc. You can hand register a domain name for $10, buy from closeouts for about $20, bid at auctions with less competitive bids or research and contact individual domain owners especially undeveloped domains.

 

You can then list your domains for sale in premium marketplaces like Dan.com, Afternic.com, Atom.com, Sedo.com, just to name a few. Sooner or later, we’ll be releasing complete domain flipping guide to help aspiring entrepreneurs to make money with domain names. You can bookmark this page for the link.

Places to Sell Domain Names

The best marketplaces to sell your domain are secondary markets where your domains for sale will receive wider exposure. You can check out places like Afternic.com, Atom.com, Sedo.com, Dan.com, Daaz.com, etc.

 

How to Start Digital Marketing for Beginners Guide

 

 

As a beginner, learning digital marketing and mastering it is the best way to build and grow a profitable online business in the long term. Creating brand awareness and selling products and services both on the internet and offline is becoming more complex than ever before with constantly evolving digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).

 

So, if you’re searching for repeatable, sustainable and cheaper ways to promote your business online, sell your products or provide professional services of any kind to a target audience, you may have to study digital marketing inside out.

 

To get you started on this guide on how to start digital marketing for beginners, let’s look at the fundamentals or basics first of all.

 

What is Digital Marketing?

 

Simply put, digital marketing are ways and means of creating and distributing content on specific topics on the internet to a target audience in a niche market with the goal of creating brand awareness, selling products and services or demonstrating subject matter expertise (SME) using digital devices and technologies.

 

At this technological age, the world is your oyster if you learn digital marketing and use it to consistently advertise your internet business, blog website, freelance services, or sell your own digital products and services, and so on.

 

Types of Digital Marketing

 

There are several types of digital marketing you can tap into and effectively use it to convert prospects to raving customers in the buyer’s journey sooner or later. Digital marketing types include:

 

• Content marketing
• Blogging
• Email marketing
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay per click (PPC) advertising
• Social media marketing (SMM)
• Video marketing
• Guest posting
• Mobile marketing
• Etc

 

As a digital marketer, you need to understand that there is a lot you’ve to learn to become an expert in the industry but it’s doable. For instance, you’ve to get familiar with topics such as keyword research, SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing, blogging, email marketing, social media marketing, just to mention a few.

 

Knowing how to use these digital marketing tactics to wow prospects and convert them to clients or customers is at the heart of this subject. Today’s potential customer has many choices to make and there are sundry merchants who are readily available on the World Wide Web for your prospect to buy from.

 

So, for you to be top of mind to your target audience, you’ve to stand out from the crowd with high quality content about your brand, product or service. This is why you’ve to become SME (subject matter expert) in your industry to excel in the business of digital marketing.

 

The first step you’ve to take on how to start digital marketing for beginners is to create a blog you own and start publishing SEO articles that answer the questions of your readers or solve the problems and pain points of your potential customers.

 

Blogging is the best form of inbound marketing and for a reason. You can specifically target profitable long tail keywords in your blog posts, rank these pages on SERP (search engine results page) and start getting free targeted traffic from search engines like Google.com

 

Except you’ve deep pockets to hire a freelance writer, content writing skills is a requirement for a digital marketer’s success. Even with as low as 5c/word, you’ll pay about $50 for 1,000 word blog post and you can imagine the amount of money it will translate to if you consistently publish 3 to 5 articles per week.

 

The basic online tools you need to start a blog are reliable website hosting supports WordPress hosting and a registered domain name. HostGator.com is a cheap web hosting company you can sign up with and you’ll get free domain name from them as a first time customer.  

 

But if you become a digital marketing expert or specialist, I can guarantee that you’ll be able to secure jobs in this field on a full time basis or part time basis or work as a freelancer. There are free and paid digital marketing courses you can enroll with online including Google digital marketing courses.

 

Having a certification will boost your CV/resume and reputation when you start searching for digital marketing jobs. However, if I’ve to start digital marketing as a beginner again, the steps below are what I’ll follow.

 

1. Learn how the search engine works and how it ranks target keywords.
2. Learn keyword research steps and use this skill to uncover profitable long tail keyword phrases to target.
3. Start a blog with self-hosted WordPress CMS (content management system) platform and publish content on it consistently.
4. Learn how to socialize and network with like minds in my target niche or industry on social media platforms online.
5. Learn email marketing automation and use this unique digital skill to build email list of subscribers at scale.
6. Master the art and science of ranking profitable keywords in the SERP and building backlinks that look natural.
7. Familiarize myself with how to track analytics, measure data and make improvements in order to get better ROI (return on investment).

 

There are free resources through simple Google search and YouTube videos to learn how to start digital marketing for beginners. Some years back when I wanted to start affiliate marketing business, I simply went to Google and type “affiliate marketing case study” with and without the quotes.

 

I was able to read a lot of blog posts, watched videos and subscribed to email newsletters on affiliate marketing business. Next, I created a blog where I was able to write blog posts regularly and monetized my content with affiliate links.

 

You can start a blog and make money blogging online as a digital marketer while learning the ropes. Having a blog will expose you to every aspect of digital marketing including but not limited to email marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, blogging, and what have you.  

 

As a beginner, what I suggest you can do is to:

1. Choose a specific niche market to focus on e.g. credit cards in personal finance niche.
2. Create a blog and do on-page SEO targeting various topics on this subject as categories.
3. Write blog posts fully optimized for your target keywords and regularly publish content on your blog.
4. Build traction by using different types of digital marketing to engage your prospects, leads and customers.
5. Build backlinks to specific blog articles to rank them on SERP so as to get free targeted traffic from search engines especially Google.
6. Monetize your blog with affiliate links, contextual adverts, etc so that you can earn as you learn.

 

The above steps are the key elements to digital marketing success. Obviously, you’re bound to make mistakes along the way of your online marketing. That’s okay! What is important is the knowledge and understanding you’ll gain as you learn how to start digital marketing for beginners.

 

Ultimate Guide to Start a Successful Email Marketing for Beginners

As a beginner, did you know that you can start a successful email marketing campaign from scratch and use it to grow your online business profitably and successfully in a matter of months? In this blog post, I’ll share some hard-to-find nuggets, tips, secrets, tricks and hacks to build an email list of subscribers from scratch so that you can make money online.

 

One of the best ways to generate targeted traffic to your website, landing page, lead magnet page, etc, is by having and following an email marketing strategy. And it has many advantages which we’ll look at shortly.

 

As you may already know, successful online marketing greatly revolves round building relationships with your target audience and constantly nurturing that relationship for mutual benefits.

 

As it were, online shoppers hardly purchase products or services from strangers and/or websites they don’t trust. This is why as an online business owner, blogger, webmaster, merchant, etc, you must find a way to integrate email marketing system as part of your major digital marketing channels.

 

The question is, “Why do you have to start an email marketing campaign in the first place?”

 

First, let’s get down to the basics or fundamentals of email marketing so that you’ve a good handle of it.

 

What is Email Marketing?

 

Simply put, email marketing is a system of regularly sending informative, educative, entertaining, and marketing messages and content to a group of people otherwise known as your list of subscribers using software provided by an ESP (email service provider) such as GetResponse autoresponder.   

 

From time to time, available statistics have adjudged email marketing as the leading and most cost effective digital marketing channel which any internet marketer can adopt in order to continuously attract targeted prospects and leads as well as getting more clients.

 

With foolproof email marketing system, you can achieve a number of business goals such as creating strong brand awareness, nurturing your leads, selling more of your digital products and services, getting more clients who know, like and trust you without breaking the bank.

 

As a matter of fact, an average email marketing ROI (return on investment) is around $36 for every $1 spent. This goes to explain why majority of successful online business owners focus more on list building than anything else.

 

As an email marketer, you’ve to sign up for reliable email marketing software in order to seamlessly pursue this goal to its logical conclusion. As an entrepreneur, it’s a good investment if you want to constantly reach out to your target audience and possibly improve sales and profits of your internet business.

 

The truth of the matter is that it takes up to 7 times to expose a specific product or service to a potential buyer before he may decides to make a purchase. What happens if there is no way or system for you to capture the email address of this hot lead for further and future communications? 

 

This means you’ll continually lose majority of your potential buyers who are not ready and able to make a purchase, sign up for your email newsletter, click a link or take action which you wish on their first visit to your website or landing page.

 

To this end, it’s very important you pay close attention to this email marketing for beginners guide and start implementing immediately the ideas shared so that you can get visible results as soon as possible.

 

Benefits of Email Marketing

 

I guess you’ll not underrate email marketing when you understand the reason why i.e. what’s in it for you. So, let’s quickly go through some of the advantages of email marketing.

 

1. It will help you to create and increase your brand awareness and identity in the marketplace.
2. It will help you to get more targeted traffic to your blog, website, sales page or specific web pages.
3. You’ll be able to get targeted prospects, leads and customers which will ultimately drive more sales and revenue.
4. You’ll have the golden opportunity to nurture and retain your customers by continually engaging them with high-impact content.
5. You’ll be able to gain customers insights through data analytics.
6. Email marketing saves you time and efforts in performing repetitive tasks in your online business.
7. It’s cost effective and affordable when you compare it to other digital marketing channels.
8. Emails can easily be distributed to the recipients who have signed up for your email newsletter.
9. You can personalize email marketing which increases open rate.
10. High ROI of about $36 for every $1 spent.
11. Ability to build trust and credibility with your potential buyers.
12. Etc.

 

Although there are pros and cons of email marketing, the advantages outweighs the disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that it is a monthly subscription which can easily add up if you’re not productive and effective with your campaigns.

 

Now that you know the pros of email marketing, let’s discuss the tools and resources you need to set up any campaign of your choice.

 

Tools and Resources to Set Up a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

 

This is the right time to invest money, time and energy to create the infrastructure for your email marketing strategy. You cannot wing it at this level because your potential subscribers need to be convinced upfront that you’ve something valuable to offer them in exchange for their email addresses.

 

These online business tools to set up an email marketing campaign include:

 

• Domain name,
• Web hosting services,
• Email marketing software,
• Valuable lead magnet,
• Email messages for your autoresponder series, and
• Squeeze page with opt-in form.  

 

Before you get started, you’ve to choose a niche market to focus on. Niche market selection will be informed based on your interest, passion, hobby or experience in a specific topic. An email marketer may choose personal finance while another may go for cyber security. It’s either you “follow your passion” or “follow the money.”

 

With that said, let me explain each of these online marketing tools and how to sign up for them.

 

Domain Name

 

A domain name is a unique address to identify your website or blog. For instance, HustleVim.com is a domain name that can be used for a blog website which will chronicle and discuss side hustle ideas. It costs about $10 (Ten Dollars) to register and/or renew a domain name per year.

 

There are lots of domain registrars on the World Wide Web where you can get cheap domain registration. But Namecheap.com is a good place to get a domain name for your internet business. Click here to go to Namecheap and register adomain name.   

 

Web Hosting Services

 

If you buy a domain name, you absolutely need a reliable website hosting company to host your website domain. Although web hosting services companies usually offer domain name registration service as well, I like to separate my web host from my domain registrar.

 

Why I use Namecheap for domain name registration, I use HostGator.com to host majority of my blogs. HostGator also offer free domain name for first time customer if you follow this link to sign up for their website hosting services.

 

You can go for the Baby Plan which will allow you to host unlimited domain names on the same account. This is the best, reliable and cheap web hosting service I can recommend for you to start an online business right away.

 

Email Marketing Software

 

In order to make your email marketing automation easy and seamless, you’ve to get reliable ESP (email service provider) which will supply you with the platform to manage every email campaign you intend to embark on.

 

There are avalanche of ESPs out there but you can sign up with GetResponse email marketing software because they are cheap, reliable and beginner friendly. GetResponse.com has 30-day free trial which you can take advantage of to test the waters and get a good handle of how email marketing works.

 

Valuable Lead Magnet

 

Email marketing is all about the common saying that if you rub my back, I’ll rub yours too. For any lead or prospect to give you his email address for future communications which will obviously include promotional messages, you’ve to offer something valuable for free to download.

 

This could include free PDF ebook, video, infographic, podcast, audio, audio book, webinar, app, software, and so on. The idea is to ethically bribe your lead so that he can willingly exchange his email ID with the product or service you’re offering as a giveaway.

 

For instance, I may decide to write an ebook on how to start a side hustle business successfully and give it away for free to my blog readers. All I’ve to do is to set up an email newsletter using GetResponse autoresponder to manage my email marketing campaign. And voila, I’ll start building an email list of subscribers through promotion.

 

Series of Email Messages for Autoresponder Delivery

 

Having a lead magnet to give out to your subscribers is not just enough. You’ve to take further steps to create series of email content which you can upload into your autoresponder for a specific campaign at a defined frequency.

 

The first of these series will be the welcome email which is usually set as day zero (Day 0). This is to ensure that the email marketing software delivers the welcome email with link to download the lead magnet immediately it is sent to the new subscriber as he completes the sign up form.

 

Landing Page with Opt-in Form

 

Email service providers like GetResponse usually provide email marketing templates with sign up forms to set up your lead magnet page. Even if you don’t know how to code as a newbie, there are email marketing templates which you can choose from and integrate to your website.

 

Majority of ESPs now integrate their email marketing software with WordPress blog platform which makes it easier to set up at any level of your experience if you’re using self-hosted WordPress blog platform.

 

How to Become a Successful Email Marketer

 

To be frank with you, not all email marketers are successful on the internet. For you to become a successful email marketer you must take note of the following points.

 

• Set customer-focused goals and fervently pursue them with your email marketing campaigns.
• Demonstrate high level of expertise in your target niche topic or field. This means you’ve to study, learn and master your niche inside out.
• Be timely with valuable content. For instance, I signed up for about three email newsletters of some highly successful bloggers in the online marketing space. Lately, I’ve been receiving information from them regarding ChatGPT and AI writing tools because that is what is raging now. You must be in the vanguard of trending news in your industry as an email marketing guru.
• Build trust, credibility and bond with your target audience by sending high quality content and occasional promotional messages.
• Where possible and necessary, show income and social proofs or testimonials for whatever you’re promoting. You can do case study and send out to your subscribers.
• In order to not irk your subscribers, you’ve to make sure you segment your list as soon as you can after getting started with your email marketing campaign.
• Perform split or A/B testing of headlines, pre-header text, html versus plain text email, etc with your email messages.

 

Elements of a Good Landing Page

 

There are basic elements which you’ve to consider when designing your lead magnet page. Let’s look at some of the essential ones.

 

1. Create eye-catching headline and sub headline.
2. Make sure that your subscription form is designed and placed above the fold.
3. Create valuable lead magnet.
4. Make bullet points of features which can be translated to benefits for your subscribers.
5. Integrate an image of the free incentive with alt-text on the sign-up page.
6. Include social proof or real testimonial if available.
7. Include privacy policy at the sign up box area or footer of the page clearly stating that you don’t rent or sell email contacts of your list members.

 

Steps to Start a Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

 

The following steps outline the best email marketing strategy you should consider for your campaign.

 

1. Choose a niche market and topic to focus on.
2. Build your website or create a blog.
3. Create your lead magnet page where you can integrate the opt-in box.
4. Create your lead magnet to give away for free.
5. Sign up for email marketing platform so that you can access and create subscription form.
6. Upload your free incentive and set up download page on your web server.
7. Promote your landing page.

 

How to Promote Your Landing Page

 

In case you don’t know, nobody will find your website or landing page and sign up for your mailing list if you don’t go out there to promote it. Internet marketing can be so competitive to the extent of discouraging the faint-hearted from going further and becoming successful.

 

What you can do is to learn, hone and master each of these digital marketing methods one at a time.

 

• Blogging
• Guest posting
• Niche forum marketing and online communities
• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Free ebook distribution
• Paid advertising such as pay per click (PPC), banner adverts, etc
• Making use of email signature
• Publishing on social media
• Etc

 

In my second part of this guide on email marketing for beginners, I’ll delve into the specifics which you’ve to look out for such as email marketing mistakes to avoid, terminologies and glossary, email segmentation and personalization, just to mention a few.