What No One is Telling You About Your Online Business

You know, it’s totally true that if you go into business just to make money you will fail

I remember the first day that I had a blast of traffic to my website. Over 6000 hits. It was exciting, exhilarating, and quite frankly, I didn’t even know what to do: I was kind of freaking out.

The truth is, I had not yet discovered how I wanted to monetize my site or what I wanted to offer the world.

I knew that I had some valuable skills and information. I also knew quite a lot about marketing, but the questions I had were:

● How do I create an offer?
● What do I sell?
● How do I keep my voice online true and honest?
● How do I sell something?

At the time of my first big blast of website traffic, I was a Social Media Manager for a few small businesses in my area. I was also dabbling in some network marketing but I wouldn’t say that I was really passionate about it.

A lot of women started contacting me through my email contact form, pleading for advice on how I could help and teach them what it is that I do with my online marketing job.

At first, I thought the route to monetizing my website would be to go all in with the network marketing and point everybody to this wonderful opportunity of selling protein shakes… but the truth was I felt like a fraud!

I felt like a scam artist telling everyone “Hey, sign up for this company and it’ll help you get rich.”

The truth was I didn’t believe in it.

The truth was the majority of my income was coming from my Social Media Marketing business.

My real expertise was in freelancing, and offering services to businesses: getting paid to do this work remotely from home.

I guess you could call me an expert in sales and marketing, really. Because I would find a businesses that needed help with marketing their Facebook, or Twitter, or even a website redesign. And, that’s how I was making my money- through offering my services to them.

So, after a couple of months floundering around, I really decided the best way to monetize is to create information products and educational material that would help other women to understand what it is I really do, and where my passion really lies.

Big business tip: Be real! Be you!

You know, it’s totally true that if you go into business just to make money you will fail, but if there’s a deeper reason, a deeper drive within you, you will persevere and go further than other people.

Therefore, I created my first ever e-books!

One was about being a Virtual Assistant, the other was about being a Social Media Manager. They talked about: the kinds of services you could offer, how to charge people, what kind of billing software to use, how to reach out to people or have a sales conversation, what kind of emails you should send people, how to meet new business owners, how to create a proposal, etc.

Essentially, the purpose of these two e-books was to teach other women how to become a freelancer, or free-agent, to go out find some business and work from home.

Nowadays, my online business revolves around a slightly different area, more on that here.

But the truth is, all of the website traffic was continuing to drive leads, referrals and customers to my business. Having a steady flow of people constantly aware of who I am, what I do and what services are… really helps my sales and my bank account. Hint, hint!

You see we are in a world where people want to look for their own information, and make their own decisions. What this means is that we all have to embrace the concept of inbound marketing

Outbound marketing is all about interruption. It’s about bothering people, bugging people through an ad or a phone call etc.

Driving website traffic is inbound and means someone found you. Now the power is in their hands, and the ball is in their court, to reach out and contact you or buy something from you.

So, my advice in this world of online business is to hone in on your website traffic, make sure that you have a steady flow of people coming to your website inbound.

Be sure that you know:
1. What you are offering
2. How much you charge
3. What your products, programs, services are, etc.

You need to be clear on this in order to make money. Period.

And lastly, you need to make sure there is a match between the people coming to your website (your readers and viewers), and the offerings that you have.

Your target market has to be coming to you, because you are offering solutions, products or services that address a pain point or issue for them .

On the token of website traffic, I want to invite you download my FREE eBook:
How I Reached 4 .6 Million Readers with No Advertising Budget

Disclosure: What No One is Telling You About Your Online Business is a “Sponsored Post” written by Susie Romans. I was compensated via a cash payment to insert her post on this blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good fit for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”