Regular businesses are pretty awesome, but online businesses have an unfair advantage over them that you need to know.
Hear me out.
Most of what you own, use, or see has been created by a business: concrete for the building you live in, the materials that your mobile phone is made of, the electricity that powers your fridge…
Businesses fuel the economy and offer jobs to billions of people around the world. They are a platform upon which our society can exist and grow.
Building a Conventional Business
Let’s put aside online businesses for a minute and look at how conventional businesses are formed.
Jane is pretty good at fixing furniture, so she decides to start selling her skills for money. She starts a business called Jane’s Fix.
Her business consists of a physical store in a cheaper are of her town, with a workshop for her to do her furniture fixing. To begin with, it’s only her – no employees yet.
Of course, since she can’t afford the rent on a store in a busier part of town, she doesn’t get enough eyeballs on her store. That means she has to buy some adverts so that people know about her and can bring their broken furniture.
The early stages are gonna be tough for Jane.
She will have to work lots of hours, pay for a store, overheads, equipment and advertising. She’ll also have to pay for her living expenses, just like everybody else.
Now, if she gets through the first few years, she’ll be able to hire people to help her with the workload. She’ll hopefully make enough money to cover all her businesses expenses and still give her enough to live comfortably on – maybe even enough to invest into her business.
Jane may or may not be successful in the future, but one thing’s for sure.
She’d have it much easier with an online business.
Here’s why.
How Are Online Businesses Different?
Online businesses can be better than conventional ones for many people because:
- They can harness the power of automation
- They are very cheap to start
- They increase your reach to the entire world – anyone with access to the internet can become a potential customer.
When you’re trying to start your own business, just like I’ve been doing since I left my 9-5 job, the one thing you wanna avoid is to spend a lot of money.
I’m a strong believer in investing in oneself, which is why some expenses such as courses can pay for themselves many times over. But you won’t be building inventory for your physical product or renting any physical space with on online business.
You can literally get started in less than 30 minutes by starting a website. If you want to start your own website as the start of your new online business, I’ve created a guide for you which walks you through the whole process.
Automation is AMAZING
Picture this.
You’ve decided to take a month off from your business and been travelling through rural Thailand. You haven’t had much access to the internet, but it doesn’t matter because you wanted to fully disconnect.
When you come back home, you check to see that you’ve made just as much money as you normally do.
Say whaaaat?? How?!
By automating your online business sales process.
Remember Jane? Let’s now say that the furniture fixer is tired of how time-consuming her business is and is looking to start an online one.
Since she’s such a great furniture repairer, she’s got skills which could be very valuable for many people around the world. In the information age, people are happy to pay to learn digitally.
That’s why she creates an online course which teaches people how to repair their own furniture. She films lots of videos and has very detailed guides on all the techniques involved.
She knows that she’s made a pretty good course, but it won’t sell itself. She has to create a system that automates the sales process for her.
The best part if that, since the course is digital, she could sell an unlimited number of them and never run out. No inventory or storage is needed!
Sales Funnels Are Automation’s Best Friends
So this is what she does: She first starts her own website in half an hour using a step-by-step guide. This will be her business’s online “home”.
She then uses an email services provider such as GetResponse which will let her send automated emails without her direct involvement. This sounds simple, but it’s insanely powerful.
So this is how the sales funnel works:
- People reach her website by seeing one of her targetted adverts online or by finding her blog posts online.
- Some of those people will see that Jane offers a free mini-course on furniture repair. This is a good quality PDF file, which gets emailed when someone enters their email address.
- This triggers an automated email sequence, called an autoresponder. Over the next few days, the potential customer will get emails which will convince them that Janes paid course is the answer to their furniture-fixing needs. I could (and definitely will) write articles on how to convince people to buy because it’s an art.
- When people decide to buy her course, payment will be automatically dealt with by a payment processor such as Stripe or Paypal. All Jane will see are emails confirming that sales have been credited into her account.
And just like that, Jane makes sales of her course without her direct involvement. Once she sets up this system, she can keep on earning passive income.
Wanna Start an Automated Online Business?
If you want to live life on your own terms, you should definitely start your own online business. It’s the best way to do what you love, automate almost every aspect of it and let it fuel your ideal life with passive income!
If you’ve been thinking about it, stop procrastinating and go for it!
To get started, join the hundreds of people who have downloaded my free guide, 7 Steps to Escape the 9-5 and Live the Life You Want!
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