An Online Business Reality Check

When people approach me for help in starting an online business, the first thing they ask me is "Whats the most popular item I can sell?"

or

"I don't have any products, where can I get them". Well the first thing you need is a market, and then you STILL don't really need a physical product.

Lets get even more deeper . . .

What is a product?

A product is the 'solution' that you are offering people in exchange for money - or to monetize your online efforts.

Makes sense right?

Now, this thing called 'product' doesn't always have to be physical. It could be information or it could be a service etc.

This is what is amazing about the internet - you don't have to offer a physical product.

Although I was dealing with just one product (Wine making that I found a dropshipper for) - which means everything was easy to manage. To grow my income, I could either add more dropshippers or do something completely new.

Being the super creative person that I am (And so are YOU, trust me), I started researching and studying other sites.

This is where I realized that I don't really need physical products.

I was like "If I'm so good at finding dropshippers, why not turn this skill into a web based service?"

So I used something that I like to call the '4M Formula'.

Market Research + Market Solution + Market Location + Market Promotion = A real business.

Market Research
I did my research. At that time when I started, there was hardly any dropshipper lists around, 2 to be exact. I was like I really like finding dropshippers, I can do this and did some heavy research using special 'keyword' research tools.

See when someone tells you that you need to do 'research' first on the internet, they are telling you to find the right keywords.

You can literally pinpoint the keywords using these tools and 'drill down' to the most lucrative market. Remember, this is the most important step. Market Research is the foundation of an online business.

Market Solution
The solution people were looking for reliable and real source of dropshippers. My product was me reviewing dropshippers. This is how I got started and was the original purpose of WDclub.

I only had like a list of 20 dropshippers, but I was the only 'human being' reviewing them - I was giving people the real on dropshippers and dropshipping.

Another great thing about the internet is there is no such thing as competition.

Why? Because when you are selling something online, you are not selling the product, your are selling YOU. People get in there for the product, but they make a purchase and continue to do so because they like your 'uniqueness'. It's all about building trust and relationships and no matter how many people sell the same product, if you've gained your customer's trust, and established credibility, you've won! Because you will always make sales. Your customer is 'comfortable' with you and appreciates your 'uniqueness'.

Just look around and see how many of the same sites are out there, so many youtube like sites, so many other 'clones' but they are successful because they are unique. They all specialize in different 'niches' but more so just unique. Even if it appears that at first glance they have the same content.

Market Location
Remember when I told you that market research is the most important step. Since I did my research right. I knew exactly what keywords will bring in the most traffic. And before I knew, I started attracting some serious traffic.

So since I did my research, I found keywords with the most amount of traffic and with the least amount of competition. Less competition means getting top 10 rankings under keywords that actually mattered was a breeze.

I just optimized my pages for the search engines (Little SEO Action) and soon I shot up in the search engines. Do your research right on the internet and you are guaranteed to be a success.

See why 'research' is the most important step of all. Research leads you to the right market, then just find a solution (easiest part of all), getting top 10 rankings becomes very easy and guaranteed to bring you results.

90 of the profits as no shipping or manufacturing costs are invovled.

Is there a subject you have extensive knowledge about? Write an ebook about it and use my simple 4M Formula to turn it
into a business.

Create a web-based service and charge a fee for it.

Leads - collect leads through your site and sell them to other companies. One of my buddies use to do this and he did this successfully for quite some time.

Affiliate Programs - Sell other people's products online and get paid big commissions. Just copy and paste there code!

Google Adsense - Google's advertising network is where you get paid per click. Some hobby sites are raking in insane amounts
of money through this. How does $30,000 a month or more sound?

In fact, if you can 'type' about it, you should be making money from it - and I'm SERIOUS

This is just a tiny little sample of what you can do 'without selling' online.

The beauty of my formula is it applies to physical products and non physical products.

Starting a business should always be something about you truly enjoy, as you will be spending a lot of time on it.

If you are passionate about it, you are guaranteed to make it a success!

How can you fail at something that you truly love doing?