HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS: YOUR 30-DAY PRACTICAL GUIDE

A popular motivational and wisdom quote by an anonymous author says, “The beginning of failure, is failure to plan.”

To anything in life, the foundation plays a major role. If you want financial freedom, you must be willing to learn how to plan your way out of poverty or anything below your desires.

The same goes for digital lifestyle—creating a sustainable business online, demands adequate planning. How do you plan to come into the industry? What do you plan to do and how do you plan to do it?

The first 30days of your coming into the internet-based business are very critical and go a long way in determining your approach to things that you can repeat in the coming months.

I have therefore identified practical steps you can take for the first 30 days of [creating] your successful online business.

1. Decide on your Niche   

What Niche Are You Coming Into? You need to do this on day one. Choosing the right niche is very germane to your success in the digital space. It is essential that there is demand and that you can make money in your niche. If you are passionate about a particular subject, then research this first. Always remember that you need to go where the money is, so if your passion does not work out then find something else.

2. Keyword Research         

On day two, I’ll recommend that you perform keyword research for your chosen niche. This is a very important step that a lot of new online business owners seem to ignore. You can do this yourself using the free Google Keyword Planner or you can outsource the task. Identifying the right keywords in your content or posts on your website and your promotional efforts is critical.

3. Create your Goal and WHY statement           

 Decide on your goal for your online business and write this down. Create a corresponding WHY statement to provide you with the motivation to work on your business each day. You can do this along with the day 2 activity.

4. Choose Your Domain Name    

On day 3 you need to choose your domain name and register it. It is your choice to go for a name that is related to your niche or a brandable domain name. If your target market is worldwide then choose a .com, .net, or .org domain extension. You can register your domain on Namecheap for less than $10

5. Choose a Good Web Host        

 This is another activity for day 3. Find a web host that will give you the best deal on a shared hosting package. Once you have chosen your web host you need to point your domain name to it. This is easy and there are numerous numbers of videos on YouTube about this.

6. Install WordPress

This can be a day 3 or 4 activity depending on the amount of time you have available. You need to have your domain name and web hosting set up first. Use the one-click feature of your web hosting to install the WordPress blogging platform on your domain name.

 7. Customize Your WordPress Site        

 Again this can be day 3 or 4. Choose a theme for your new website that you like. Add the necessary plugins to enhance your website. Learn how to add content to your new WordPress site. There are lots of videos to show you how to do this. Get a logo created from a good freelancer on Fiverr.com and add this to your website.

8. Add Your Initial Pages  

 We will assume that you do this on day 5. You will need the following pages on your new website:

 • Home page – this is the first page that your visitors will see so make it enticing.

• About Us page – this is very important as people want to know who you are and what you stand for

• Contact Us page – you need a way for your visitors to contact you and there are plenty of free plugins available to create a good contact page

• Terms and Conditions page – again you can find a free plugin to create this

• Privacy page – use a free plugin to create this.

9. Add Posts

This is where you add niche related content to your website. You can use text, videos and images here. Write these posts yourself or outsource the writing. Start adding content from day 6 and do this at least once a week.

10. Create Your  Marketing Plan       

From day 7 onwards just focus your effort on promoting your online business. Decide on your marketing plan and follow it. Add tracking to all of your promotional efforts to see what is working and what isn’t. In the next chapter, we will discuss scaling your online business…