Maybe your life goal is to spend more time with your spouse or kids. Or you want to do more volunteer work with the school or with your church. Maybe you simply want to slow down the pace of life and just be able to walk your dog or sit by the pool more often. Or perhaps you have a driving desire to drop your high-stress, hectic, dead-end job and do something worthwhile for a living.
I’m an introverted, research geek that hates selling. I also wanted to have full control of my life. Chances are you do too. Now, after years of study, I’ve found that building an online business is simple if you follow a proven system. You can use the following steps to help raise money for your church, help your spouse start an unrelated online business, or help increase awareness about a personal cause.
Step 1: Determine Your Niche
You can’t please everyone. You have to target a strong, defined niche market. Once you’ve identified your niche, take a look at the competition to determine if the niche is worthwhile or not. Will this niche be able to financially support your business? Once you have conquered your niche market, then you can move on to broader markets.
Use this site to help identify a possible niche: http://inventory.overture.com. It shows you how many times people have searched for various terms in the last month using the Overture search engine. If your topic has 10,000 searches in a month, then consider that a possible market. For example, in April 2006, there were 12,569 searches for powerlifting, but only 1347 searches for Westside Barbell.
Step 2: Putting Together Your Website
The biggest mistake most online small business entrepreneurs make is to trust their website design and content to an outside source. You can’t be at the mercy of a busy web designer when it comes to updating your site. You MUST retain control over your website. You’ll save thousands of dollars and many hours of frustration.
One option is to purchase a mass-produced “do-it-yourself” template from an online company such as 1shoppingcart.com, websitewizard.com, or webmarketingmagic.com. I use websitewizard.com, and it allows me to send daily email, sell products, and keep a subscriber database. Plus, it’s incredibly easy to update my content using the software. It’s like working in Microsoft Word. And it’s less than $500 for the year.
Do not build a website on graphics and flashy designs. In the fitness industry, customers just want content. Content is king, and some of the ugliest sites on the internet pull in the most money.
Step 3: Build Your List
Your list is the key to your success. Without a qualified list of prospects, you really won’t get any sales. So the first goal of your website is to capture the email address of each qualified visitor.
To encourage sign-ups to build your list, you must offer something of value for free. For example, you could offer a free newsletter, a free five-part e-course on your site’s topic, or a free report giving the reader tips about your site’s topic. Your sign-up form must be highly visible. Consider a pop-up box. While pop-ups can be annoying, the fact is that they work. In addition, put the sign-up form in the top center or top right corner of your website.
Take a hint from EliteFTS. Put the sign-up box in the top right corner and then offer a valuable free newsletter.
Step 4: Drive Traffic to Your Website
There are several ways to drive traffic to your website both online and offline. Online methods include pay-per-click (PPC) such as Google ad words, search engine optimization, joint ventures (i.e. co-authoring an e-book that is sent out to other authors’ lists), and affiliate programs (where you give a commission to other websites who promote and help sell your products).
Two other less technical but highly effective methods of driving traffic are:
1) Preparing a free report for readers to forward and share with others. Include a bounce-back (link to your site) in the free report to generate new leads.
2) Submitting content to other websites and article directories (like ezinearticles.com). Always include an interesting byline that makes them want to read more with a link to your site.
I’ve found that the best way to build my list has been the latter of the two. Having an article or interview run in another popular fitness e-mail newsletter can increase my list by hundreds of prospects within hours.
In the fitness industry, writing for others works incredibly well. As an example, refer to anyone that has ever written for T-Nation. That will do wonders for traffic to your site.
Step 5: Become a Credible, Valued, and Trusted Source of Information
There are a lot of people out there claiming to be experts. You have to stand out from the crowd if you want to be a credible, trusted source of information (and therefore sell to your readers). The more you deliver the more credibility you will have. Always be visible and mention any media work that you have done. Put photos and contact information on your site. Testimonials from satisfied customers are also very strong credibility builders.
I recommend sending a newsletter out to your list on a regular basis. For new sites, stick to once per month. Eventually you can increase to twice per month and then once per week. I actually email every day and give general fitness and nutrition tips to busy men and women who want to change their bodies.
However, you must know what your readers want to hear. I continually see fitness sites writing about muscle fiber types and other science heavy content. I guarantee that these articles are not being read. Instead, give valuable tips that can help your readers improve their workouts (or other valuable action tips specific to your content niche).
Step 6: Get Customers into Your Product Funnel
After you have built credibility, your next goal is to convince the reader to purchase a product. Start by promoting a low-cost product (generally a “How-to” e-book). This gets the customer into your funnel. From there, you will use a systematic marketing plan to upgrade your customer to a medium-priced product (generally a manual, a CD, or DVD). The end goal is to upgrade your customer to your highest-price category of products (which might include seminars, a membership, or consulting) over and over again.
For example, on WorkoutManuals.com, I start by offering readers a free newsletter so that they will sign-up for my list. I get readers to enter my funnel by purchasing one of my monthly workouts ($10-20) or my flagship manual, TT for Fat Loss ($37). In the next step, I up-sell readers to my Six-Month Bodyweight Manual ($67) and ultimately recommend that they become Turbulence Training Members ($197 per year).
Step 7: Automate Your Website
The beauty of an automated website is the ability to wake up from a night’s sleep to find orders in your inbox and money in your account. Automation is easy to do and should be built directly into your website software.
I recommend selling all of your digital products (i.e. e-books, audio files) through Clickbank.com. Clickbank accepts credit cards and PayPal and arranges for the digital file to be downloaded almost immediately by the customer. All you have to do is set up a few pages at the start and then start promoting your products to your list. It could not be easier. Other sources of automated e-commerce options include websitewizard.com and 1shoppingcart.com.
You should also arrange to set up an auto responder when someone joins your list. An auto responder is a series of emails sent automatically to anyone that submits their email to the required form on your site.
Finally, your e-commerce section should be set up to recommend upgrades with each order. Once a customer has decided to buy, you could offer them the opportunity to upgrade and include another product at a discount price.
Step 8: Track and Test Your Responses
The key to improving your website’s performance is to track today’s performance. From newsletter open rates to web page traffic and conversion rates, everything should be tracked. You can even track where people came from to your site or from what page they leave your site. (This may require purchasing external tracking programs.) But it’s important to know what is working and what’s not working on your website.
It’s just like having a record board for your lifts. You always want to be tracking your numbers to make sure that you are progressing.
You’ll also want to test your pricing, headlines, ad copy, offers, bonuses, and P.S. note. By changing one of these variables at a time, you can determine what words best sell your product. You can then determine what words you’ll want to focus on when driving traffic to your website via Google ad words and search engine optimization.
Step 9: Product Development
The number one thing that your products must do is solve your readers’ problem. You have to create your products for your readers based on what they want to know, not what you want to give them.
Survey your list for their interests. Have them send in their biggest problem in your niche. From that list, write your e-book. Make the most common problem your headline.
After you have developed your product, you need to sell it in a package that contains bonuses that raise the total value of the package to ten times the value of the main product. Always give your customers ten times the value of the original product.
You should over deliver on your promises about your product. Make it easy to understand. And always include bounce-back offers to up-sell your readers to the next level of your funnel.
Step 10: Writing Ad Copy for Your Product
Selling online is a no hassle, low resistance way to make money. It appeals to those of us who hate selling. We simply write an interesting, valuable sales letter explaining the benefits of the product to the reader. Now, show the reader that it will help them.
Copywriting experts agree that the headline of your sales copy determines 80-90 percent of your sales. If your headline fails, your copy will fail simply because no one will go on to read it.
Always include testimonials in your copy. These greatly increase your credibility. Try to get a photo and include the full name of the provider of your testimonial.
Finish your ad copy with a P.S. reminding the reader to take action and give them a reason to do so immediately. And always include a strong guarantee in your copy.
Step 11: Harness the Power of People
If you are an ethical and honest person with integrity, you’ll succeed if you network properly. Get to know all of the experts in your niche. Arrange for join ventures and affiliate programs with them. And always treat your affiliates well (offering them 50 percent of the sales they create for you). This will increase your credibility with others and open up the potential to greatly increase your list and profits by being positively exposed to the lists of others in your niche.
And always, always, always maintain the highest standards of customer service. Follow the “golden rule.” Build rapport and relationships with your clients and know as much as you can about them before mailing. Put your customers first.
Step 12: Take Action
Don’t just read this information, say, “Wow. That sounds awesome.” and then forget about it.
Instead, take this easy to follow formula and put it to work. Dedicate at least 15 minutes to it everyday, and you’ll slowly chip away at what you once thought was a formidable task. Alwyn Cosgrove said it took him only 15 minutes to get his first website up and running when using an online template (1shoppingcart.com I believe).
Get your website online today and start building your perfect life right now!
The Numbers Game
Remember these numbers:
· 10,000 searches on Overture equals a viable niche.
· One newsletter per month minimum must be sent to your subscriber list.
· Ten times the value—each product you sell must come with ten times the value of the information.
· 80-90 percent of your response comes from your headline. It must catch their attention!
· Fifteen minutes to get your site up and online.
Craig Ballantyne, MS, CSCS, is a strength and conditioning coach in
Toronto and a member of the training advisory boards for Men's Fitness and
Maximum Fitness magazines. Craig's fat loss expertise and workout tips are
featured every month in Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, and various online
newsletters. His fat loss, muscle-building website,
www.TurbulenceTraining.com,
features his best-selling TT for Fat Loss routine as well as his new
Six-month Bodyweight Turbulence Training workout featuring almost 100
different bodyweight exercises.
Craig also works extensively with athletes and trains young athletes of
all sports in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is currently a consultant to Rugby
Canada and is helping the National Team prepare for the 2007 World Cup. Craig
has interviews with Jim and Martin on his sports training site at
www.cbathletics.com.
Signup for the free newsletters at www.cbathletics.com, www.grrlAthlete.com, www.TurbulenceTraining.com, and www.WorkoutManuals.com.
Copyright© 2006 Elite Fitness Systems. All rights reserved.