Summary:
It’s easy to lose sight of how new and fast evolving our internet infrastructure is. It was really not so long ago that the customers you could easily target were largely limited on a geographic basis. Today you are able to reach customers anywhere in the world through technology, greatly increasing the sphere of your potential influence – but also increasing the number of other competitors you need to win customers away from.
You don’t have to fancy yourself a tech wizard to get up to date on building your own online empire. Jack Ma certainly didn’t let his lack of a technical background stand in the way of his journey from an obscure teacher to the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba. Read on to learn how you can begin on your own path to starting an online business that can help your earning potential reach the next level.
Transcript:
The internet represents an enormous opportunity for your business. It’s now as easy as the click of a button to target any customer in the world. The old boundaries for who you could reach have been completely eliminated.
The flip side of the coin is that your competitors are now just as free to go after your business. When the barriers to entry have been completely destroyed, the competition goes ever more intense. Now more than ever, it is absolutely critical that you “get smart” on tech. If you see software and computers as a niche or someone else’s field of expertise, you have put your career in peril. Technology is no longer an option, it’s a necessity.
You Don’t Need To Be A “Techie”
You might not consider yourself a tech person. But you don’t even have to be to take advantage of the opportunities online. One of the biggest e-commerce platforms of all time was created by a teacher in an obscure corner of China with no technical knowledge whatsoever.
Still in the early stages of his career, Jack Ma has already played a major role in revolutionizing e-commerce and the potential of the web. His is one of the great entrepreneurial stories of our time. His journey demonstrates the power of an interconnected world at its very best, rising from humble beginnings as a teacher in eastern China to launch his own small business from a tiny apartment, ultimately growing a global corporation and attaining enormous success. The company is Alibaba, and if you aren’t familiar with it, there are more than a billion people in China who could tell you. Essentially it operates as the Chinese answer to websites like Amazon and eBay, offering vendors the opportunity to sell practically anything that you can imagine. Jack has done this, while maintaining a steadfast commitment to philanthropy, giving back to society through historic investments in healthcare, education, and preserving the environment.
He didn’t go to school for technology or undergo rigorous training in coding. What he did have was a nose for opportunity. Jack got his first glimpse at the internet in the early heady days of the 1990s, when the World Wide Web, as it was more commonly called then, was just beginning to show the full range of its potential. Jack saw an early search engine that would allow him to search all of the internet, which was a much smaller place back in those days as some of you may recall.
Jack famously decided to search for the very first word that popped into his head. “Beer.” He ran a search and found plenty of options in the United States, Europe. Everywhere but China. It seemed that China virtually didn’t exist in the online world.
Some of us would see that and shrug it off. Or we might wonder when China would come online. But Jack decided to be part of that opportunity, using his vision and his world-class interpersonal skills to build the team that would ultimately bring him extraordinary wealth and connect more people around the world than he could have ever imagined when he was first setting out on his career.
There’s Room For Everyone
You don’t need to create an internet giant, of course, to sample the rewards of online commerce. Even a simple business can pay enormous dividends and help you reach far more customers than you might think.
Good Design Matters
Good web design is simply critical today. With the amount of options that users have for where to turn in their surfing, there is no excuse for a bad interface. There is so much content and stimuli out there, that potential customers will flee at the first sign of exasperation or annoyance with your site design. Becoming better grounded in tech matters doesn’t mean that you need to do everything yourself, especially when it comes to programming or website design. You often will find that it is actually a far better use of your time to delegate work like this out to experts, who you can find on a number of freelancer sites online, such as Upwork or Fiverr. Resist the temptation to go for bottom-dollar freelancers as well – as the saying goes, “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur.”
You can also use sites like SquareSpace or Megaphone, that charge a nominal fee each year for custom-made website templates that look professional. Regardless of which services you choose, keep in mind that you have plenty of options online for where you can turn for assistance in getting your site off the ground.
Create a Buzz
The internet is really just a platform. You still need to be selling quality content or services that customers want. Your online marketing approach can help do that by generating excitement around your product and how it can help your customers to solve their problems. Whether you go the pay advertising route or leverage affiliates to get the word out about your product for you, you will need to invest just as much time, energy, and thought into promotional efforts as you put into product creation.
Passive Income Flexibility
The beauty is that, unlike selling your time to an employer, selling products online may require a lot of upfront work and some ongoing maintenance, but you can have the ability to make it run more or less on auto-pilot, helping you to earn passive income that can continue to work for you and generate returns even while you are sleeping.
The key is to keep moving proactively each day with setting up your online infrastructure and learning more about the trade. Don’t feel like you can’t jump in until you are fully an expert; Jack Ma certainly didn’t and it’s a common mistake many people make. But simply making progress each day can help keep your momentum going.
Price Point Matters
One piece of advice that I’ve learned is that you may be well positioned to try initially selling a lower-cost product. With the sheer amount of competition for products out there, including on sites like Alibaba, you do need to make a compelling case for why your product or offering stands out from all of the others if you have it listed at a premium price. You’d be surprised at how returns from moving a high quantity of $5-$10 products can move compared to putting out an e-book or craftwork that clocks in over $100. Clearly there’s no one-size-fits-all approach here, just be sure to do some experimenting with your price point to see what helps drive the most sales.
You’ll also want to spend some time targeting specific slices of customers within the vast ocean that is internet traffic. Hoping to succeed with everyone is a recipe to create a muddle that nobody wants. You’re far better off to do some market research on who is likely to want to buy your product and then aggressively targeting advertising on the sites and channels that they frequent online.
Ask yourself, what steps you can take to get your online business up and running? How will you begin the path to major revenue online? Do you have a passion you want to help people with?
You may want to focus most of your initial efforts on thoroughly assessing your customer base – their spending habits, their online surfing tendencies, and what product or service they need that they are currently missing out on. If you can envision how your business can breach the gap to help them, you will be well prepared to begin your journey of building a thriving online business. You can unleash your passion for profit, if that is something that appeals you.
You can also learn more by visiting my website: tonyneumeyer.com and registering to receive free trainings articles and more. Also subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Facebook. You can get your copy of The 7 Minute Millionaire and check out my other books here: https://tonyneumeyer.com/books/.
