Ten steps to internet business success – step 8. In these 10 steps you will learn a reliable and repeatable system for making money online. This is not a GRQ scheme. You will need to take action. You will need to do a reasonable amount of work over several weeks. If you’re prepared for that, read on.

If you haven’t already, read step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6, step 7 first.

The approach  …  identify a real problem lots of people are experiencing right now then find a quality solution you can sell them. Research supply and demand figures as well existing solutions then apply a series of steps to begin promoting the product to your target market.

The previous 7 steps were:

Step 1: Have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and by when

Step 2: Identify a real human need that many people have regularly

Step 3: Search for existing solutions/cures/helpful advice

Step 4: Measure the demand for solutions to this need

Step 5: Perform a reality check

Step 6: Do some serious research

Step 7: Prepare the solution to the problem – the product

Internet Business Success in 10 Steps [step 8]

8. Next, prepare your website to capture leads. Sorry, this is a bit long but it is an extremely important step and well worth your time to not only read it carefully and completely but to act on it as well

The main purpose of the website is to capture your visitors email address. You’ll be doing that with a squeeze page – more on that in a minute. To do this successfully and with sufficient volume to make it all worthwhile, it is important for your website to find its way up to page 1 of Google search results for your chosen keyword(s).

Do not be concerned if you don’t have the skills to put together a website as there are ways to build sites with little or no technical knowledge. You will develop some additional technical skills over time. In the meantime you can outsource some of the work. Outsourcing is not as scary as it sounds and there are some tips below.

A key concept about your website is that it shouldn’t attempt to sell to first-time visitors. That’s called a sales page – usually a one page website – some of which can go on for what seems like forever attempting to convince first-time visitors to press the “buy now” button. It’s not very productive if you hit visitors finding your site for the first time with a page telling them to buy straight away.

Here’s a sales page so that you can see what I mean. It’s part of my blog subscriber special offer. If you’re interested contact me and I’ll see if I can dig up a discount on that price

You’ll see that the sales page does not attempt to build a relationship over time but comes straight out with the offer and the only real action choice you have is to buy or click the back button.

The success of this type of direct sales page relies on really good sales skills – mine are still developing , the ability to write a convincing story that builds trust and convinces the visitor to buy there and then, plus large visitor numbers and sometimes a whole lot of luck.

Think of it like this. When buying a new TV would you like to walk around a showroom looking at what’s available, have a chat with one or two salespeople, take some time to think about it, maybe come back the next day and then make the purchase decision? Or would you be more or less likely to buy a TV over the phone as a result of a direct marketer calling you at meal time as they often do and demanding a decision there and then on the phone?

I prefer the slower approach where I can get a good idea of what I am buying. Most of your website visitors are just like that too and they wont appreciate being hit over the head with a “Buy This Right Now” campaign.

In any case, sales pages are best written by experienced marketers. I set out to write these 10 steps so that anyone can build a successful internet business, not just experienced marketers. You see, it’s better to be a friend to your visitor rather than an adversary – someone who has sales targets to meet and is really only interested in making the sale.

It is much better to build trust with your visitor without selling anything upfront and then ask for their email address in exchange for something of value and then eventually you get to the selling part.

This is achieved with what is called a squeeze page and it works by promising something of value in exchange for their email address.

Here is a squeeze page of sorts. It’s more like a reverse squeeze page – see below – but for now would you please  ignore the blog navigation.

You will notice that there’s nothing for sale – and I sell nothing to you later – but the key difference is that you start to learn a bit about me and what I am proposing prior to me asking for your email address, and there’s no request for money.

If you are still not sure about it I offer even more information on a second info page. Notice that there is an name/email capture form on the second page as well.

The squeeze page concept offers valuable information or a promise of something of value, prior to asking for your name and email address.

Why use a squeeze page? The following video from Mark Widawer offers some compelling reasons. By the way, Mark is the author of the e-book template referred to in step 7.

Another option and the one I am tending to prefer lately has been termed a reverse or delayed squeeze page. It works by offering a lot of free information before your website visitors get to your actual squeeze page. It is a carefully crafted funnel in a sense and it operates a bit like fishing.

My preferred method is to offer visitors a story that mentions their problem and hint about how you can solve it. This builds a relationship between you and your visitor on their very first visit to your site. You spread the story over several pages so that they click a link at the bottom of each page to continue reading the story until they get to the squeeze page. Limit each page to not much more than one or two screens of text.

How is it like fishing?

• The fish are your visitors/traffic arriving at your website. We’ll get to the part about website traffic soon (step 10).
• The bait is your story, how you can relate to their problem and how you’ve discovered a solution. This is where you put your previous research into action.
• The hook is the page where you get their email address – the squeeze page.

Steps for building a reverse or delayed squeeze page.

Page 1: Start by introducing yourself – do it briefly but sincerely so as to begin building a relationship and rapport with your visitor. Make them feel like you are talking directly with them. Then – still on page 1 – outline what they will learn over the next few pages. Include a summary of the problem they are online searching for – very near to the top of the page before you lose them – and a snippet of the success they will achieve with what you have discovered. At the bottom of the page put a teaser text link to the next page inviting them to “click here to see what you’ve discovered” or something along those lines. This page is the default page of your site. That is, when someone types in your main domain name in their browser, this first page is what they get.

Pages 2 ~ 4: Using the results of your product research in step 6 – write a heartfelt, convincing story and, just like they do in TV episodes, end each page/episode with a teaser for the next page. The teaser on the 2nd last page – the one before you capture your visitor’s email address – should tie in with the main solution you are offering and be closely related to the search terms you are targeting.

Last page (squeeze): Then on the last page draw your story to a temporary conclusion and offer to continue the story by asking their permission to email more details over the next two weeks. It could be that you put a title on this last page (the squeeze page) something like “Take the first step towards pain-free living” – again, using my example for back pain relief.

Hint: Think of creative names for each of page of your story. Avoid calling them page1, page2, etc. Name them according to what they contain. For example: how-i-fixed-my-back-and-saved-thousands-on-medical-bills. This text will appear in the title of your visitor’s browser window and with a bit of careful planning, will also be the bold heading at the top of the page and part of it can be the teaser text from the previous page.

You could use a blog to host these pages. It takes just a little bit of juggling with templates to get pages to appear clean on a blog, that is, with no other distracting navigation other than what you put there on purpose. Here is a sample of a clean template page on this blog. This is the technique I use to put sales, squeeze and other plain pages on my blogs. Notice that there is none of the normal blog navigation and so on to distract readers. It’s not my technique but I bought the product and I do recommend it if you choose to go down the blog path.

For blogs, Word Press is free and easy to configure. The blog format does have some drawbacks (that’s the subject of another post) but its benefits far outweigh any negatives. Alternatively, you can use a static website.

If you already have the skills then start writing and setting up your sequence of pages that will make up your reverse squeeze page. If you don’t have those skills – no worries – go over to oDesk.com, click on the “Hire” link and create a job. It should cost less than $20 with little or no graphics and no more than $50 for a website with a full set of graphics to get you started.

This is the concept of outsourcing. Paying someone else, usually at a lower hourly rate than you would pay locally, to do specialist work for you. It saves you learning a whole new set of skills and it’s usually a done in less than half the time it would take you to do it.

When you first visit oDesk.com or any outsourcing site, take a look at some existing jobs to get a feel for how to phrase your job request and the approximate price range. Be sure to ask for exactly what you want or you might end up creating and paying for a second job to finish the site.

Fiverr.com is another option but I have not used it yet. You can get a huge range of things done for just $5 each.

Here’s a short video on how to use the outsourcing site elance.com, which is an outsourcing site similar to oDesk.com. If you are thinking of outsourcing your site building work, take a few minutes to watch this video now. eLance.com seems to be a little more user-friendly for first-time outsourcing. When creating a job the you are presented with suggested sample wording based on previously successful jobs.

Choosing a domain name. It is important to choose a domain name that closely matches your chosen search term. It should ideally address the need and hint at the solution all in one. I know that is a tall order but internet business success doesn’t just land in your lap – you have to really want it. Do you remember clearly defining your vision in step 1? You have to go out there and grab it with both hands.

The domain name represents approximately 50% of the value Google places on the relevance of your site. Take your time to carefully craft a good domain name as it will make it that much easier to get free traffic from the search engines which is covered in more detail in step 10.

From your research, determine the central keyword/search term that you think people would be using when they set out ready to buy the solution to their problem.

You then want to get a domain name with these words in it. For example, using “back pain relief”, you might start by looking at the following. It is preferable to pick a domain name with no spaces between the words.

• backpainrelief (Only look at .com or .net or .org – nothing else)
• back-pain-relief
• get-back-pain-relief
• backpainrelieftips

After a bit of practice I think you’ll get the idea pretty quickly. Look for a domain with the search term/main keyword combination first and no spaces between the words. If that is taken try putting hyphens between the words, then try adding a word at the end or even at the start of the desired domain name.

How do you get a domain name and host your site?

For domain names, NameCheap is well-priced and easy to deal with. You can manage absolutely everything about all your domains on one page. Once you get the hang of these 10 steps you’ll be wanting to create more sites so get started the right way now – NameCheap

For hosting your site, JustHost focus on providing just that – hosting. From $2.95 a month it’s hard to find a better deal and not worth shopping around until you’ve got a dozen sites or more – JustHost

Provided that you have put in the right amount of time and effort in these first 8 steps, the hardest parts of this process are now behind you. It’s almost all down-hill from here

Go to step 9 of 10 steps to building an online business
(link goes live 2 days after date of this post)

Over to you. What do you think of the series so far? Share your thoughts below and help others at the same time.

Related posts:

1. 10 Steps to Internet Business Success (Step 10)
2. 10 Steps to Internet Business Success (Step 5 – Reality check)
3. 10 Steps to Internet Business Success (Step 4 – Supply demand)