Your Free Online Business Is Not Necessarily “Free”

Introduction

Why not start an online business, indeed?

First off, it can be quite lucrative, once you know what you must do, and what you need to know, and how dedicated you must be to succeed and grow your business.

Almost every minute of each day, the Internet turns up with more programs to attract people who are interested in starting up their own internet business.

Having convinced yourself that you have made a sensible and thorough decision, you can start searching for free online business ads. You then compare the different prospects to see the best of them all. However, you also need to be aware that a free online business is not necessarily free. There may only be some aspects of the business that you do not have to invest any money to open your online business. It is important not to continuously look for marketing products and systems or the next big thing to come along. We generically call this behaviour “Shinny Object Syndrome” this activity can cost you dearly in both time and money.

Next, you should look up the experiences of successful online entrepreneurs who are now making considerable incomes. From their experiences, you may learn many things that will help you become prepared to launch and grow your online business.

There will be money to pay for things such as internet access, hosting, domain name fees, computer maintenance, software, electric bills, etc. So, keeping this in mind will prevent you from getting bitterly disappointed.

Pick a Niche

The first thing that you will need is the subject or niche that your business is concerned with. There is much helpful information out there to help guide your decision on a niche. I am not going into the details of picking a niche in this post that will be a subject of a future post.

Domain Name

A good domain name should be relevant to your niche and not too long and be memorable to your customers both new and existing.

You should accept the fact that you cannot build a successful internet business without a website.  I would avoid the free subdomain offers with free hosting as they limit the growth of your business. This is one area that I would recommend having a paid domain name. It will save you much heartache as your business grows to have all the issues relating to migrating your free hosted site to a paid hosting company.

Domains can be registered with any domain registrar; it does not necessarily have to be the same company that provides your hosting. Personally, most of my domains are with the hosting company that I use mainly for the convenience of having it all in one place.

Hosting

For your web hosting your online business domain name must easily reach everywhere.

A reliable web host has a great uptime record, offers excellent customer service, and has a great reputation in the search engine market. You do not need false or empty promises in web hosting services.

There are many good web hosting services out there such as Bluehost etc. However, the best-priced and most reliable host if you are starting out Interserver. follow this link to check it out for yourself.

I would not search for free offerings for hosting as even if they might cost you some dollars, a paid hosting service that offers you a stable environment for your website is what you need. Check that you do not spend on extra features that you do not require.

Website Statistics

Your internet business will rely largely on the visitors it attracts. It is important to have a great tracker that will show you how many visitors you got and be able to identify their reactions. You need to know the pages they view most so that you can refine your website and improve your marketing efforts.

Advert Tracking

Like the website stat, ad tracking assists you in knowing which of your marketing campaigns have the best results. With the ad tracker, you will know how many users responded or reacted to your ad. Probably not all your marketing techniques are effective. With the ad tracker, you will know exactly which marketing techniques to retain and focus on.

Auto Responders

Autoresponder tools will help you in following up and staying in contact with your clients with the necessary information they ask for or you think, they might need. This will greatly assist with building your business. There are many autoresponder companies around and some allow you free limited accounts which you can expand to different paid levels as your lists expand. My best advice is to start off with a small account at a company that allows you to expand without any loss of service. Aweber can provide this and be scaled as your business grows

Email List Hosts

This would usually closely align with your autoresponder provider and you must ensure that your email list remains your property and is not available to others without your permission. For your online business to prosper, you must know how to capture your target customer’s email address. By collecting their e-mail addresses, you can contact them on a personal level and build an ongoing business ‘relationship’ with them.

Education

Your online business will also flourish a great deal more if you as its manager and administrator educate yourself in making your online venture prosper. Many courses online offer free online business training and comprehensive information.

There is much free online business building information from reputable websites that will give you tons of tips on starting and growing your internet business.

Conclusion

Free online business may not really be free. Nevertheless, in breaking down the aspects you need to have and know to get started, you will find many free offerings to take advantage of.

You should now be better informed regarding starting a “free” internet business and be aware that although there is much free training and information out there, there are some services that you may need to pay for to build your successful business.

All the above are detailed in Dean Holland’s Book, The Iceberg Effect., you can get your free copy by clicking here.

To support this, in this article we have discussed the following points.

• Pick a Niche
  • The subject of your business
• Domain Name
  • Needs to be relevant to you niche.
  • Registered to you.
  • Memorable to your customers.
  • Do not use free subdomains as it will impede your business growth.
• Hosting
  • Must be reliable and stable.
  • Don’t use free hosting as it may retard the growth of your business.
• Website Statistics
  • Important to understand how many people are visiting your sites and what they are looking at.
• Advert Tracking
  • Importance of understanding how various adverts are performing.
• Auto Responders – Email List Hosts.
  • Will provide you with a service to automatically email your customers.
  • Will give you the ability to promote products to them on a regular basis.
• Education
  • You should always be looking to gain additional knowledge on this subject, much of this information is free.

As a total package that covers off nearly everything you would need to build and scale your business I believe Builderall” provides you with all the resources you require at a reasonable price. At the premium level it provides web hosting and statistics, a page builder, fully scalable autoresponder with unlimited emails and list members. It also has webinar packages, and much more all at a reasonable. Have a look at Builderall here.

Good luck with your future internet business.

Peter Abraham