Online Business Building: How to Build From $0 to $10,000 Step by Step

Blog | Online Business

Why online business?

Everyone wants to know all about and learn online business building, and there seem to be endless blog posts with tips for success.

How to make money online

and

work from home.

The list goes on…

Starting an online business is the dream for a lot of people out there who want freedom from the daily rat race grind that the working world offers.

The reason an online business is so popular right now is that more and more people are becoming aware that it exists, why?

We see those people working from their laptops in the Starbucks on our way to work in the morning, and sure they could be students working on some boring essay, but what if it’s someone checking in on their sales rolling in?

Or we see some person talking on a Facebook ad about how they make money online and promise us the secrets of how to make money fast or some other cheesy headline…

So we wonder, where did they get their business ideas, how did they make it happen?

Well, the truth is today it’s easier than ever to start a business online and make money from your laptop giving you freedom of time and place, to do your online business building.

In 2015 I finished college and joined one of those courses, by 2016 I had a 6 figure business which was bringing me a bigger paycheck allowing me than any corporate salary I could get.

I’d love to say it was because I’m so talented and so hard working, but in reality, it wasn’t that hard to get started.

Sure it was a lot of time and hours put in, but following the process was pretty simple as I had the blueprint laid out for me.

That’s why I say it’s the best time right now to start an online business.

The reasons why online business is the best option:

You don’t need to be there to run the business – Freedom of Place

You can automate every aspect of the company – Freedom of Time

It quite simply gives you the ability to do what you want when you want while creating more value for the world than you would at some job working for someone else’s dreams.

I’m not saying you’ll become a billionaire or even a millionaire but if you want it, you can get it, you need to follow the right process.

How to start in online business building?

So how do you make money online…

Where do you find business ideas?

How do you make your website?

Where do you go for your first clients?

There are so many questions that come up, and I know I felt the same way when I first discovered that starting a business online was possible…

Earning money online is possible, and in this article, I want to share how I went about starting my first online business.

I hope that through my story, we can unveil a lot of the mystery surrounding online marketing and making money from home.

I’ll be sharing some of the tactics I’ve used from thinking of online business ideas to creating my website and landing those first clients, before meeting the challenges of scaling and automating, with plenty of failures along the way.

Earning money online by starting a small business isn’t an easy process, but it is a simple one when you know what to do.

So I can’t make it any more comfortable with this article, but I can at least provide some insight into the process so you can see how simple it really can be.

It’s funny when you look into the typical questions people have when first researching this topic, and they search for things like

create a website for free

Or

how to make money fast

But free and fast don’t come with the territory here if you’re thinking that way you’ve got a long way to go.

It’s a costly process, which is why I recommend keeping your day job at the beginning (my first mistake) so you can have more fuel for your business.

It takes a lot of time as well, so fast isn’t very likely if you’re thinking days or weeks… to get where you want to be will more likely take months and years.

But to give you an idea of what to expect…

It took me two months to land my first client, six months for my first 10k month, and 18 months for my first 25k month… and I was a slow grower!

So with those issues out of the way, let’s get into the meat of this article…

Ways to make money online

Let’s start by illuminating the types of online business you can start with.

Starting an online business doesn’t just begin with the business idea.

You first need to understand what three types of online business there are so you can decide which best suits you.

Information Products + Physical Products + Digital Services

Online business building always requires a lot of decisions.

The first decision is figuring out the best business to start. You can check out my other article about different business ideas at the bottom of this page.

Successful online businesses take a lot of work.

So to achieve your dream of having an online business that gives you control over your life you must decide the right type of business for you.

The three types of online business are:

Information Products: Courses and training distributing your knowledge to others e.g. course on how to fix your posture.

Physical Products: Creating and Distributing products to those who want or need them e.g. watches, cameras, nails

Digital Services: Providing your services or those of your team online e.g. consulting, coaching, marketing.

Information Products are best for those that already have some knowledge in something.

If you know you’re a master at something that others wish to become masters at, you can create courses that train people in the craft or discipline you know.

These are great if you are great at something, but it won’t work if you’re not truly a master because people will refund your worthless course.

It also doesn’t work well when the information is common knowledge, or there are already too many courses in the same area.

Physical Products are best for those that love numbers and hate talking to people.

These businesses are focused on finding the most sellable products and selling it at mass via paid channels so you must be on point with the numbers side of things.

They’re great for people that aren’t interested in developing people skills because no direct selling over the phone or in person is required.

Digital Services are best when you have a service you can provide individuals or groups, and you’re great with people

These businesses require that you have some skill to give people or at least a team that can provide that skill.

If you have a background in sales or at least the level of extroversion required when focusing on the high ticket side of the coin, then this type of business is perfect.

Best Online Business Ideas

Once you decide on the best type of business for you… what suits your character and situation… you can then move on to figuring out the best business ideas.

The first thing I recommend doing is coming up with ideas yourself, that you think you’d love to do. Because the cliche is true, if you love it, you will put in more effort, and be less likely to give up.

Sit down with a piece of paper, put on some good music and write these three lists:

Things I’m good at

Things I love doing

Things I have in which I have in-depth knowledge

Now using the three lists, you’re going to write a new list titled ‘business ideas’

You should give at least 30 minutes of unbroken focus on this task.

With this list, you can then do some research to find out whether it’s a hot market to get in to.

Are other companies running ads for the idea on google

What sort of traffic is it getting on google (Use Google Keyword Planner)

Are there groups for this idea on Facebook or Linkedin

Can you find any websites already targeting this niche

If the answers to these questions are: Yes, At least 10,000 per month, Yes a few, I can find 10.

Then you can be sure that the business idea is not a horrible one, and there may be a decent sized market out there already.

We don’t want to have to create a new market, that takes a lot of capital invested.

The idea is to enter a large market with some competitors, where competition is not very intense.

These conditions are more common in markets with low barriers to entry and a lot of differentiation, meaning room for a lot of niches.

So at this point, if you’re relatively sure that there’s a right amount of room for you in the market, we can then move into the build phase.

How To Build A Website For My Business

For this you will want to buy a domain name, I typically use Namecheap.

Once you have your domain, you’ll need to set up hosting and WordPress.

If you have a little more cash, I recommend investing in Clickfunnels which is an effortless way to build a landing page.

One very key thing is not to get bogged down into design land. Often we get so caught up in making the design perfect that we forget what matters, marketing and sales.

I’ve seen horrible looking websites drive millions in revenue and beautiful sites not make a penny.

Of course, having a perfect website is excellent too but let’s not make that the goal, in the beginning, the goal should be to test our business idea in the market.

If you’ve decided on starting with a physical product I would recommend Shopify as the best option. It is most popular with e-com drop shipping.

There are some essential things to include on your website to maximize your conversion rates as well.

So go here and download the list of must-have elements for your website.

How To Test My Business Idea

Once you have built your website, we can then move into the test phase.

We need to get some data on how to sell so we have something to work on and can make judgments about what to improve on.

One way of doing this is with a ‘test’ buy now button that redirects website viewers to another page where we tell them it’s sold out or still under development.

So we can at least take their contact info and measure the conversion rate of them clicking that buy now button.

This allows us to set up multiple versions of related products and design different marketing messages to test which angles and products get the most clicks.

Of course, this does take some cash invested as you will need to be spending on ads to get sufficient volume to test, or you could just run the test for years!!

Another good option for testing ideas if you are going for a service based business (e.g. agency or consultancy) is to check angles and prices over email and calls.

It’s pretty easy to start a business from home when all you need to do is sit there sending emails all day.

But you also need to be working hard, testing all of the possible angles to reach your desired market.

There are so many online business opportunities that it can make it challenging to decide which one to go with, so using these methods for testing physical or service-based businesses will help you get closer.

Starting a business online is going to be a slow process, but if you have patience and just follow the steps, you’ll get there eventually.

The real difficulty is in this testing phase because it takes time to work out the best offer that the market wants.

How To Build Your Online Business

Once you’ve gone through idea generation, you’ll then want to get into the actual build phase.

You have your business idea, and you’ve tested it out in the market so now you need to build the system that runs the business.

Online companies are unique in that this system can be almost entirely automated if you play your cards right.

The 4 hour work week is not a myth, but in terms of sustainability it is in my opinion, it’s pretty unlikely you’re going to automate your business forever fully, the market changes so you should too.

The first step once we have a business idea is to create a map of your business.

Sit down, make a coffee, put on some focus-inducing music and get going.

If you have no idea what makes up the pieces of the business, for example, you’re getting into an online business idea that you have no experience in, then this process will be a little slow.

What you need to do is backward engineer the business through research.

The first step is pure google research, looking at future competitors websites, going on Upwork and freelancer, and a range of other platforms.

If you come up with the entire delivery system with this method, then great, but if not there’s another hack that works well.

…If you have a family member or friend with a business you can use theirs… otherwise set up a company domain in a different field that would be your competitor’s client as well as an email address.

Contact your top 10-30 competitors in the market saying you’re interested and want to get on a call to discuss a potential project…

Now you need to be careful on this call so as not to give away the fact that you’re just trying to figure out how they do things and each step.

This is why you need to be smart about what you say.

I have listed below the exact script of questions you’ll want to use to simulate interest in actually buying while sprinkling in questions to figure out their system (Note: Remember to record the calls to analyze later).

I want (their product/service) because I’m starting a new business in (Whatever, something somewhat relevant) and am currently reaching out to vendors to learn more about what they have to offer…

Apologies if I ask too many questions I’m known to be a stickler when it comes to the details…

Could you tell me more about the product, it’s main features and benefits, what sets you apart from competitors?

What’s the production process, I want to know more about what goes into (Their product/service)

Is your production process pretty typical amongst competitors or is there something that sets you apart?

Great, we want to use (their product) for (Whatever the obvious or typical use case) but is there anything else we could use it for?

So in terms of price, tell me more about how you came up with the price and what went into it?

Great, is there anything else I should know about that will help with my buying decision?

Now that you have information around the price, timeline, features/benefits, and their general pitch you will have a good idea of what’s going on in the back end.

You can use this information to put together your primary system.

This is what I did when I started my first online business, and I found that it allowed me to get enough of an idea to implement the first steps.

From here you need to take action and go about the hiring stage, so it’s a good time to plug our post How To Hire For Your Online Business.

CONCLUSION

This post should provide you with the initial boost required to start your online business. You can also check out my article on the best ideas for your online business building by clicking here.

It’s a long road, but a very satisfying one if you can push yourself to get started.

Comment below with questions or experiences, and I’ll get back to you.

Cheers,