It's a fact that more online businesses fail than most. This is a shame because by putting a few simple systems in place to begin with, it's easy to have a very successful online business. There are now around a billion people online and this is only going to increase, so this is very much the business of the future. Once these systems are in place, you can set up multiple income streams, and this is how the top marketers earn so much. So here are eight tips that are vital (but simple to set up) to the difference between running a successful business that works on auto-pilot, or running a failing business in which you may as well be throwing darts in a blizzard.



1/ Research The Market First, Then Create The Product

Never, and I do mean never, create a product and then try and find out if there is a market for it - this is marketing suicide. Decide which niche you'd like to work in - start by thinking about your hobbies and passions. Then look in either GoodKeywords.com or a similar free to use tool. (Go to Google and type in "Free Keyword Tool".) See how many people are searching on that keyword term. Ideally you want several thousand people searching per month.

Vitally important - try and get a feel for the type of people who are in that niche - remember they must have disposable income - if your target market is average age 15 you won't make much money!

So find that hungry crowd before you do anything else.

2/ Give The Target Market EXACTLY What It Wants

You've located your market. If you find out what their biggest problem is, and then provide the information product that gives the solution to that problem, you'll be putting yourself in a very strong position to have a flourishing onlline business. So how do you discover what their biggest question is?

First, spend a day or two lurking around the forums and discussion groups. The idea is to get a feel for the forums - keep an eye out for the type of questions people ask, who the regular contributors are and so on. If this works out well, these people could form your customer database, and any top marketer will tell you that their number one asset is their database of highly targeted customers.

If you can provide answers to any questions, do so - this helps establish you as a subject matter expert and gives you credibility - vital components to your success. It also is a way of introducing yourself - and beginning to form relationships within that online community. Remember also, that you can always go away and research the answers to questions if you don't happen to know the answer. A word of caution here - there is a lot of dross on the internet, so make sure you research properly.

Meanwhile, create an online survey - you can do this in askdatabase.com or surveymonkey.com. The survey will just ask what is your biggest problem about ....... Offer a free copy of your info product once it's completed. After the survey is complete, maybe a week or so, collate the answers - you'll probably find that the same questions occur time and time again. Providing the answers to these questions will provide the outline to your info product.

(By the way, if nobody bothers to answer your survey, you've proved there isn't really a market there, and it's not really cost you anything.)

3/ Always Record Contact Details

Everyone who answered your survey will have to provide name and e-mail details so that you can send them their free copy of your e-book. Keep this data, it's like goldust. This is how you start to build the all important database. Think like a buyer here - you must give people an incentive to provide their contact details, especially in these days of spam. One way is to put a squeeze page on your site - offer a chapter of your e-book as a tempter - something like "fill out the box below to get a free report about....." and then a box for name, and e-mail address should do the trick.

4/ Automate And Outsource Wherever Possible

Going on from item 3, the squeeze box will send the customer to a thank you page, this can be connected up to an autoresponder. Here, you can blast out messages to your customers, by writing a series of e-mails, and having your autoresponder send them every 5 days or whatever you choose. This will be done automatically, and it can also personalise replies.

An autoresponder is your 24/7 marketing machine. Check out awebber.com as an example.

The point of a successful online business is multiple income streams running on autopilot. Set systems up and then plug each different product into those systems. All the top marketers have multiple income streams. If you try and do every job in your online business yourself, you'll perish from stress. E-books can be ghostwritten for you. You can get copywriting done for you. Have squeeze pages and autoresponders set up. Take all the stress out of your life.

Elance.com is a great resource here.

5/ Create Your Own Unique Products

Don't freak out here - following on from item 4, you can get a ghostwriter to create an e-book for you. Give them the outline you got from your survey, and ask them to answer those questions. In elance.com you can specify how much you'll pay for the book to be created - $300-$500 should get you a top quality product created. In elance you can check the ghostwriters feedback, a bit like e-bay. Also, you only pay half the fee up front, the rest on completion. Remember, these are professional writers, they will do a good job or they get crappy feedback, which would affect their earnings, so it's not in their interest to give you rubbish.

By the way, even if the book is ghostwritten, it is your intellectual property, and you keep all the profits!

Some people make money online without products of their own. The reason I say create your own is that it gives you leverage. If you have your own product, once you've sold a few, you can approach other marketers in your niche who have large lists of responsive customers and sort out a joint venture (JV). Everyone wins here, because you get to market your product to a load of targeted customers, which should be profitable, and the other marketer can make a whole load of cash without his own product, just by reviewing and then endorsing your product to his list. And don't forget, you can then market to these people in the future as well, so you've grown your database!

6/ Have A Back-end Product To Follow Up

Statistics reveal that it takes between 3 and 5 contacts between marketer and prospect before the prospect buys. This is why it's important to build relationships with customers. So the drill is, 3-5 contacts where you provide valuable information (eg your free report) then a low cost front end product, say your e-book at $19.97. Next might come a 3 CD Rom set plus workbook at $49.97, then maybe a 10DVD set plus workbook at $197.97 and so on - you get the idea. People will buy when they trust you - but it goes without saying you must provide value in return.

7/ Learn The Fundamentals Of Copywriting

I mentioned that you can outsource copywriters. But even if you do outsource, you need to understand copywriting so that you know good and bad copy when you see it - you may need to put tweaks in, so you must understand the principles behind good copy. Also bear in mind that good copywriters are not cheap. These days there is so much info about copywriting for the web, my suggestion is to learn how to do your own.

Michel Fortin is one of the worlds best copywriters - check out his blog, thecopydoctor. It has a ton of free advice about writing copy.

8/ Test And Track Everything

Michel Fortin, just mentioned, is a fanatical tester, in common with all the top online marketers. It is vital to know where your site's visitors come from, when they leave and why. This info is really good news, as it points out the weak areas in your site. The top marketers also split test headlines, price points and a whole load of other stuff. You can easily set up two headlines, so that customer a will see headline a, and customer b sees headline b. After a while, you'll know which headline works best. That becomes your control. Now try and write a better headline. If that outpulls the first headline, that becomes the control. Now try and beat that, and so on.

Software like statcounter.com can help you here - and it's Free!