In Part 1 of this article, I explained how I arrived at the point of starting an on line business,

In this article, I will describe some of the processes that I went through. Hopefully you will pick up some useful tips.

I started to do some research on how to start an on line business. I had no previous on line marketing experience. I was a novice, but with a hunger for success. I read books, magazines, researched on line articles, participated in forums and listened to podcasts on my evening walks. I was fortunate to come across the lessons of some successful internet marketers. They were very generous in sharing their learning's, resources and secrets to their success. I remember at the time, that a lot of what they were saying didn’t mean a lot to me. But after I starting building my website, I went back over the information again, this time, it was in context and started to make a lot of sense. The information was rich. I quickly found out that the good internet marketers were all delivering the similar types of messages. There was a common thread in their message, things were starting to make sense. Best of all, most of the information was absolutely free.

Keys to starting a successful internet business:

1. Do a lot of research. You will hear lots of conflicting information about doing this or not doing that. My answer to this is simple. The internet is rich with information. Some of it is good and some of it not so good. Try and corroborate information from different sources and form your own opinion.

2. Don’t procrastinate, just do it - you will make mistakes but often the best teacher are the lessons you learn from making these mistakes. You will grow and learn by making mistakes, it’s part of the process. The internet is not a perfect science and people will have differing opinions about how things work.

3. Don’t sweat on the small stuff. Initially, I was paranoid that my website had to be perfect. Naturally, because it’s on show to the rest of the world, right ? If you are like me, I am a perfectionist, the problem with this is that I would fuss over the small detail and unfortunately all this did was slow me down. Once I realised that this was an impediment to moving forward, and the fact that my website would constantly be changing anyway, I made a decision that getting it close to right was good enough. I would get plenty of opportunities to made adjustments along the way. I started making money even through there were imperfections on my website anyway. I am not saying that you shouldn’t take care, just try and put things in perspective, that’s all.

I remember the moment that I turned the web page to the world. It was a moment of relief and exhilaration. A couple of days after turning on the site, I was going for more regular Sunday walk along the esplanade at the local beach. I remember receiving an email notification on my phone. I looked and there it was my first sale. I was thrilled that the hard work that I had done started to work. The following morning another sale, and then the following day another. The momentum just kept building. I started to see my Google rankings on key words build up.

So you may ask what is my first on line business? I have developed successful on line businesses over a short time, my first was selling safety shoes. What did I know about selling safety shoes and safety boots. Truthfully very little, but this was also part of the challenge to build up my knowledge about the products that I was selling. I quickly came to the realisation that a successful internet business was built on generating traffic to the site. When I enter a keyword or term, I am quickly reminded by Google the number of other sites out there that rank for the same key word as I do. We all basically sell the same products and in some cases the same brands . What was going to set my website, selling work shoes, apart from the thousands of other on line and bricks and mortar retailers selling safety shoes. The answer is simple, I had to generate more traffic to my site. You know for yourself that when you search for a information on the internet, you will seldom go past the first couple of pages. Building your brand and traffic to your website will provide you with a distinct advantage and keep you near the front.

If I listened to the armchair experts, I was doomed for failure, no product knowledge, no experience of knowledge about the internet as a distribution sales channel.

I have since moved on to other business models and have also advised others about the opportunities of the internet.