1.1. The Concept of Making Money Online

The concept for earning money online with a legitimate business model is very simple. Some aspects of the process may not be that easy to implement, but if you manage to put all the pieces in place, you can eventually build a successful online business.

The process of making money with a web business consists of three major phases: Defining your offering, Starting a website and Attracting visitors. If you efficiently go through these phases and manage them appropriately, you can easily achieve your goals and Earn revenue.

The concept of making money online with a website:

The concept of any web business presented in phases like this is simplified, but it shows the big picture. This Guide, more or less, follows this concept and will further elaborate the phases where we will go in more details and explanations.

Here, in order to clarify the concept, we will just shortly discus the phases:

1. Define your Offering

First thing you need to do, when starting a business, is to decide what you are going to offer to your potential customers. We use the term offering to describe a wide range of products (physical and digital), services and information you can offer to the internet users worldwide in order to satisfy their needs and demands.

Billions of internet users out there have interests, questions, problems, desires and needs, so your role will be to target one (or few of these) and solve them via your offering in a profitable way.

At this point, you should not worry what exactly you are going to offer because if you can’t develop or create your own products or services you can always offer someone else’s for a commission (via online mediation). You can also publish ads on your website and earn. In such cases, your competitive advantage should come prominent, not when you develop the product or service, but  in the next two elements of the online business, especially in the third (Attracting visitors).

When deciding what to offer to your online customers, the most straight forward approach is to follow your interests and/or your field of expertise, but it’s not the only way to go. Despite that, you can choose any field or any business idea you like, based on a business opportunity you discover or your inner intuition. In any case, you must have intention and determination to gain and grow your knowledge/expertise in the field or topic you choose.

Investigating the needs of the customers, finding the right idea to pursue and defining your offering is something we discus in more details in Step 2 and in Step 4 in The Guide.

2. Start a Website

After you decide what to offer to the internet users, you should start a website where you will present your offering.

Building and managing website these days is super easy. Often, not tech savvy people who want to start a business online find this issue most frightening, but believe it or not, this is usually the less challenging part. There are free web tools that will enable you to set your website in 30 minutes or less. The more challenging issues come when you need to enrich your site continuously with interesting and engaging content, what is part of the next phase.

In some cases, depending of your online business concept, you might need a custom solution for your website but fortunately, the most types of online business can go with standard websites that can be easily started and managed with free website builders like WordPress.

Starting and managing a website is something we discuss in Step 3 and Step 5 of the Guide.

3. Attract Visitors

Here comes the biggest challenge for every online business starter. The fight for the customers’ attention on the net and their hard earned money is vigorous. Attracting visitors to their sites can sometimes be challenging for experienced online marketers and established business too. However, you shouldn’t worry …much , since there are many techniques and channels available online to bring visitors to your website.

Besides the efforts to bring in the visitors, you should also strive to keep their attention, earn their trust and convert them to loyal customers on a long run. The process of attracting website visitors in order to earn online is challenging not because it is hard to do, but because there is competition, it requires time, patience and some experience.

You can define your offering very fast and you can change it /adopt it later if needed. You can also set your web site easily and enhance it gradually. When it comes to attracting visitors, you will need to put long term effort and time to create engaging content, build your following on the social media, earn good positions in search engines, build your list of email subscribers, find profitable ways to advertise and so on. However, if you master the skills for attracting and keeping the attention of the customers your road to online success is ensured regardless if you have or not own products and services.

We will discuss strategies and technique for attracting visitors in more details in Step 6.

4. Earn revenue

Earning revenue or making profits is the desired outcome of any business. The way you will generate income online depends on you offering, or more precisely, on the revenue model you select. You can sell products or services (own or someone else’s) and earn sales revenue, you can recommend products and services and earn commission or you can simply publish ads on your website and earn from that. (The revenue models are explained later in Step 1)

The potential of earning online is huge. You success will depend on many factors including your idea, your skills, the profitability of the industry/topic you get in, the level of competition etc, but, as mentioned before, the most important factors are your willingness to learn new things (as you go) and your long-term devotion.

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To conclude, in order to make money online you should first define your offering (products, services, information), then build a website where you will present the offering and at the end you should work to attract visitors to your website. If you successfully manage to put in place all these aspects of your online business the visitors will recognize the value in your offering and will start generating income for you.

In-Depth Readings:

Work form Home – The 3 Options.

Worthless Offers to Make Money Online

Turn Your Passion Into Profitable Online Business

Make Your Online Business Successful in 7 Steps.