In this post, we will reveal 7 Secrets for Successful Business Online that those gurus don\’t want to let you know. Starting a business online is simple, but how to build a Successful Business Online is another thing. You need to keep testing and optimizing to find the best strategy to fly.
1. Shining Object Syndrome
As we have access to so much information on the internet, there are both good and bad for it. Most of the time, we will be loaded with tonnes of information and shifting from one to another opportunity too fast. This is especially important as most of the online influencers or “gurus” will show the good part of e-commerce and those results but what about the suffers they had before succeeding? How did they work to build their Successful Business Online?
And most beginners will think that things will always be good and success is overnight. But when they face difficulties, they shift to another new opportunity instead of learning and fixing the problems. Soon, you will face the 4 problems below:
Inability to finish projects.
When you get excited about new opportunities before your master your current one, you may end up jumping ship before you can see any meaningful results. For example, if you start affiliate marketing for a few months, and then move to Shopify dropshipping, then Amazon FBA and others, you’ll never get to see really good results as you’re switching too fast following the “new” opportunities you discover.
Poorly planning your ideas and directives. People with shining object syndrome tend to focus on the novelty of pursuing a given strategy, or making a specific change, rather than the strategy or change itself. For example, you might start developing your first online store, choosing products and running ads on it. Then you saw this guy on YouTube sharing the so-called latest trending item, and straight away you switch your product and then another guy came in. Without proper research and testing of the products, merely switching the following trends you found online might not be the best way. Instead, develop your long-term game plan on how to test and verify a good product and then follow through on that plan.
Burning through cash.
There are hundreds of SAAS platforms offering business tools and ad managers offering different ads. But if you do not focus on one and master it, you’ll end up with tools for businesses that are impressive, effective, and downright fun to use. Unfortunately, if you subscribe to all those services, or you jump from platform to platform, you’ll end up burning through so much cash that these tools become incredibly cost-inefficient.
Confusing your staff
You aren’t the only one affected by your decisions and constantly alternating momentum. If you change your business’s direction too frequently, your staffers won’t be able to keep up. They’ll see projects they’re working on suddenly become irrelevant when a new detail emerges, or see their goals shift almost unpredictably. Over time, this can cause serious disruptions in employee loyalty and productivity.
2. Spending too much time research
If you search the term e-commerce on Youtube or Google, there are thousands of videos and guides on how-to and case studies on how to create one successful e-commerce business. And, the fun part is, every single “expert” out there will have their own secrets tips and tricks that make a Successful Business Online. So, which one to follow?
You will soon be starting your learning mode and wasting all your time watching those Videos and not doing anything productive at the end. After months passed by, no progress is done.
3. Not focusing on the right thing
When you’re starting out, there are millions of things to do and you don’t know which to start and what to focus on. Here is a simple 5 steps guide that I recommended for starting out.
- Select & Research Your Niche
- Finding Your World-Class Suppliers
- Building & Optimizing Your Store
- Getting Traffic to Your Site
- Scaling & Expansion to 7 figures
Each of these steps is the most important to focus on building a successful store. And after you have all set up, test your store by sending traffic to it. Now, what to focus on here?
In your ads manager, focus on the cost per click and conversion rate of your ads. If the click-through rate is too low, focus on optimizing your ads.
And, if the add-to-cart or sales figure is too low, focus on optimizing your store design and checkout process.
If you’re not getting any sales at all, with a high visitor rate, maybe your product or pricing is not right. Then, go and optimize it.
Always remember this, your goal is to make money. The other things are all steps to get you closer to your goal. In fact, I don’t care what you do or which business you’re interested in. Just go ahead, pick one and master it. Reading and watching videos alone won’t make you rich. You need to implement what you learn and master it.
4. Expecting Easy Money
Most of the time we receive questions from new business owners that they’re not getting sales or not getting enough sales after running ads for a day or 2. Our advice here is, to give some time for your ads to be trained. If you’re using Facebook ads or any other ad platform out there, it takes time for the algorithm to learn about your audience, especially if your audience is new. You need to let the ads platform know your audience and target the ads to people that had a higher chance to be interested and make a purchase on your website.
If you’re watching videos about making money online, earning fast money online. Based on my experience, some of these people are actually not working that well. Teaching people how to make money online is actually their business to earn money. Some of these videos are good, showing steps of how to do it. But at the back, they’re monetizing it through affiliate links. Most of the software they’re using, they’re actually affiliate for the business and earn commissions from you using it. I did not say this is bad. Affiliate commissions can help to sustain the content maker to provide good content. But make sure you listen to the right mentors.
One of the masters of online marketing now is Russell Brunson, the co-founder of ClickFunnels. I learned a lot from his podcast, YouTube and books. Expert Secrets & Dotcom Secrets are 2 must-have books for every online business owner. It’s the complete guide to succeed in online business. Moreover, the best thing about it, is these 2 books are free now. Just pay shipping & handling and they will send it worldwide.
5. Making Order Information Difficult to Access
One thing people are concerned about is when will they receive the item. They barely know who are you and where is their item. All they know is your domain name, and brand name and that’s it. And if you’re using the dropshipping business method, most of the time your delivery will be between 2-4 weeks or even longer in some cases in some countries.
And in some cases, people will cancel the order if they waited for too long and didn’t receive the item. You need to let them know the entire delivery process, how long it takes to process the order, the delivery status, where is it about and when it’s targeted to be delivered.
All these need to be clearly provided to the customers so they can track the item. One shipment method we use in dropshipping is ePacket. It’s a fairly low-cost shipping method that allows fast shipping from China to the US. And the best part, you can share the tracking number with the buyers so they can track it themselves. It is exciting to wait for the delivery.
For free content or digital content that you’re delivering through email or online platforms, make sure you have a clear step-by-step guide on how to access it. For example, if you’re delivering a free ebook or reports through email. You can have the guide to check the spam box. Or, guide them to enter their information to access your member’s area to get the content. Having a clear guide will really help.
6. Return Complications.
Now, we get into the return rate. To gain more trust for our buyers, most of the time we will offer 14 or 30 days free return if they’re unsatisfied with the goods received. And for most beginners, this is the part they worry about the most. The hassle of processing too many returns, the return cost and also the brand reputation for a high return rate.
Instead, We always offer to keep the item instead of posting back to us. Why?
By having a reputable supplier and checking on our product quality regularly, we have confidence and from our experience that the experience rate will not be higher than 5%. Also, people will get surprised by your offer to keep the item and remember your store. Some might even share it with their friends and family. Free advertisement!!!!!
This is even easier if you’re doing digital products. Don’t think about it what if the guy had consumed the entire of my products and decided to get a refund? There are a few restrictions that you can do to prevent that. For example, you can set a restriction in our refund policy that a refund is only possible if you consume less than 20% of the content. This is because it just doesn’t make sense if you already consumed most of the content and decided that the content is not good and wanted a refund. You have wasted your time and energy on it. You’re just being cheap and trying not to pay for it.
And if they really wanted to refund for a digital product, your loss will also be minimal as digital products are free to distribute. Just make sure you protect your rights and prevent them to download and share the content illegally.
7. Not Enough Brand Display
To get successful in the e-commerce world means you need to be omnipresent. Start with one platform, master it and then move on to another one. Your goal is to get more audience to your content and brand message. Some might think that branding might not be the most important thing. But think about it this way, what do people remember about your business? It’s much easier to convert an existing customer compared to a new visitor that doesn’t know anything about your business.
Not only that, if you would like to sell your business one day, good branding will really help to sell for a higher value. People aren’t buying the business alone, they’re buying your branding and your customer list. Think about it, Whatsapp & Instagram had been bought by Facebook for billions, although both provide free services. What Facebook wants is the customer base that Whatsapp & Instagram have. They can monetize the list by selling ads and other services.
Conclusion – How to Build a Successful Business Online
Now you already know the 7 Secrets for Successful Business Online that will help to grow your business online success. Start building your empire now. If you would like to sign up for training, I highly recommend starting with the One Funnel Away Challenge.