Stop Selling: Skyrocket Your Online Home Business Success

Stop Selling: Skyrocket Your Online Home Business Success

By: Darren Harbst

Successful Internet Marketers Serve Others. They focus on delivering something to their customers that helps solve a problem or somehow makes their lives more simple. The truly successful online home business ventures provide a recurring service that people really want on a regular basis that helps them with a problem, helps them simplify their life or provides them something that they enjoy.

However, most internet entrepreneurs fail because they do not understand this very simple concept - "If you don't offer me something I need or something that makes my life better, then I probably won't buy from you and I certainly won't remember you or your business." This seems relatively straight forward and somewhat simple, right? But it is amazing how many online home business ventures just don't seem to grasp this concept.

Fact: Every business in the world, whether it is online or offline, offers products and services to their customers. Many online entrepreneurs focus solely on selling their products. They build a website, submit it to search engines, then start email campaigns and other forms of advertising focused on selling their products. They write horrible ad copy suggesting that their product is the "Best Secret To Success," and demand that you buy it for an unrealistically reduced price. Then they sit back and wait - for a couple days - wondering why the Mass Hordes of Traffic on the internet aren't buying their product. This leads to frustration, and eventually they quit. Maybe this sounds familiar to some of you?

Here's Our Seven Steps To Skyrocket Your Online Home Business Success.

Step One - Stop Selling: The first thing you need to do is to stop selling your products. Yes, the pictures are pretty and maybe the product is really good. But your customers are surfing the internet, seeing lots of competing products and you need to grab their attention. You can do this by offering something free - but ebooks are boring! You can offer a free article or newsletter - but many people are still hesitant to provide you with their "real" email address. So, how do you capture their interest and gain their trust? You certainly won't win any friends by just offering a product for a reduced price - everyone is doing that! And you won't win any loyalty by throwing pop-up windows at them either.

The products need to become the second thing you promote in your business. The first thing you should promote is the Great Value And Service your online home business provides. So step back, relax, and stop selling that $17, $27, $37 ebook and start defining how you will provide true value to your customers.

Step Two - Search Within: Before you can be successful in any business venture, you must define what distinguishes your business - what makes you different from the other million plus online entrepreneurs and why should I buy from you? The truly successful online home business ventures provide a service that people really want on a regular basis that helps them with a problem, helps them simplify their life or provides them something that they enjoy. You need to understand, from your customer's perspective, what truly adds value in your niche. This is something I refer to as Voice Of The Customer - if you were the customer, what would really "knock your socks off" - and how do you provide that! There are infinite ways to go about defining this for your business.

A traditional method is the "Business Plan" approach - this is a service most local Chamber Of Commerce organizations offer to new beginning businesses. The intent of defining your "Business Plan" is to define what will make you different from everyone else. Learn to see through your customers eyes - then provide what they want. Keep in mind that the internet is simply a mass abundance of information. So, what information can you provide to your site visitors that adds so much value that they stay ... read some more ... begin to trust you ... maybe even come back for more ... and eventually buy your products because they actually trust you as a subject matter expert!

Step Three - Search For Solutions: Take some time and look at what your competition is offering - what value are they providing ... how do you offer more value? Focus on the real value - not the products! If you believe the products are the real value, then you should spend some time exploring the product to capture the real value it provides. Think about what you defined as the true value you would provide and see if anyone else out there is doing the same thing. If they are, then go back to Step Two and start again - you haven't defined what makes your online home business different!

Conduct Research. How can you possibly expect to build relationships with your customers if you don't know anything about your market, niche or products? Here's a traditional offline shopping example for you to think about: Are you more likely to buy a product when you actually find someone that understands the product you are looking at and is able to answer your questions ... or when you can't find anyone to answer your questions? Knowledge is Power - especially on the internet. You can really gain the trust of your visitors if you come across as the Subject Matter Expert for your niche!! You must define why your online home business is the only site any customer should ever go to again!

Step Four - Setup: Your website is your storefront - so it must communicate the real value your business offers in 3-5 seconds! Make sure your site effectively communicates what makes your business different, and better than any other site on the internet in your niche. If you are struggling with this, you need to go back to step two and three, because you have not clearly defined your true value yet. Or, maybe you are not in the right niche.

Setting up a website is not the focus of this article, so we won't discuss specifics here. However, there are a couple things to keep in mind. Pop Ups are a Pain! Flashing Banners are annoying - and they make you look like a cheap affiliate website that certainly is not an expert in your niche. Free ebooks are nice, but are becoming more commonplace. Newsletters are also very common - and are becoming nothing more than a sales letter that I give you permission to send me on a regular basis and which I will delete. Look, I am your potential customer, I am looking for information right now - why make me wait for your newsletter autoresponder? Why not make the information available to me right now? Show me why I should stay on your website ... and eventually buy from you - otherwise, I'm leaving!

Step Five - Start Slow: Begin by writing articles, submitting them to article directories and on your blog. This is extremely powerful for several reasons. First, you can put your backlink into your article which will help with your search engine rankings. Yes, this is extremely powerful and is one of the most effective ways of generating free traffic to your site - when done properly. But search engine rankings is not the primary reason you write articles.

Writing articles forces you to continue researching your niche. It allows you to better understand your online home business value from your customer's perspective. This will translate into changes you will make on your website to improve how you present your value to your customers as well as add more content to your site and promote your knowledge base in your niche - making your site more of a subject matter expert site. Yes, writing articles takes a lot of time. Guess what - building a successful online home business takes time! If you are trying to make a quick buck, you are in the wrong industry! This is a hard reality that millions of internet newbies learn the hard way - that's why there are some very rich internet marketers out there sucking up all that money off the newbies. As you are writing articles and submitting them, you will continue to learn more about your niche and how to better serve your customers - providing real, true value to them.

Step Six - Serve and Support: If you have completed steps 1-5, you are now starting to get traffic to your site, and you are building relationships based on trust and knowledge with your customers. You may not have sold anything yet - that's ok. Your true measure of success is how many people are coming to your site and reading your articles. There are many ways to see if your articles are working. Site Statistics will show you which pages are being opened. Focus on your article pages to see if you are having an impact. Also, look for comments on your blog. Respond to all comments - positive and negative! Always thank posters for their opinions - this will build your credibility. Never allow yourself to get into a "shouting match" with a not-so-nice poster.

Answer all questions. If you don't know the answer - do your research! Find The Answer For Them!! Now you are Serving your customers - and they will appreciate that. Soon, they will start buying your products because they trust you as the subject matter expert. Another technique is to post articles asking questions like "What are you looking for in a Online Home Business," or "What do you wish we had on our site." This will give you tremendous insight to your customers needs, and help you fill the gaps!!

Step Seven - Success: Congratulations! You made it. Take a look back at what you have done. You started knowing nothing. You had some "cool" products that you wanted to sell, but didn't really know how. You have made yourself an expert in your niche, you have gained the trust of your customers and you are adding Real value to your customers - making their lives better. That's a Successful Online Home Business!!

About The Author:

Darren Harbst is owner of MakingProfitNow.com and writes on a variety of subjects. To learn more about this topic Darren recommends you visit: http://www.MakingProfitNow.com Online Home Business Success