Okay, you're here because you want to learn how to build a profitable business. But what kind of business? We'll get into that in Part 1.

BACKGROUND

I'm not sure whether this will be 2 parts, 10 parts, or 100 parts, or something else. I could write an entire book, maybe even a series of books on how to start and run an online business (hey, there's an idea!); obviously, there are a lot of folks around who have already done so. And, of course, many more books will be written to address the challenge.

For now, I'll stick with 10 parts. It's a nice round number and I can probably both divide all I know into ten solid parts and fully flesh each one out.

I will try to lay out a system whereby you can build a business from the ground up into a thriving, cash-pulling empire. That's the goal. Much of what you will read here will be what I've done in the past and what I will continue to do in the future to build my own online empire. I am certainly not there yet. But the goal is to build a publishing juggernaut that pulls in profits hand over fist with very little day-to-day labor by me (I'm light years away from that stage!).

And there will be a lot of “let's try this” type stuff, too — things I haven't tried but have on good advice that they work, or things I haven't tried but I got a hair-brained scheme to try it out.

That's the background.

ONLINE BUSINESS METHODS

There are countless business types on which to build your empire. You can use one or more, of course. By types, I am referring to monetization methods like AdSense and other advertising, Private Label Rights creation and/or publishing, creating your own products to sell, membership sites, and affiliate marketing (selling other people's products and services).

Throughout this series, I'll point out the various business types: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. That's the MBA-speak version. What that really means is this: The pros and cons or benefits and drawbacks. Used in the right circumstances, any business method can work wonders. In other words, all methods can play an integral role on bringing you the cash and profits you seek. But, again, more on that in Part 2.

OVERVIEW OF WHAT'S TO COME

There are many things you need to think about and consider when setting up your business, no matter what type of business you finally embrace (and HINT: You will want to employ more than one, eventually, but I suggest you start out with one and only one). All that said, here's a grab bag of the ingredients you'll need to bake your online empire cake.

1. Business method. Pick and choose: PLR, product creation, affiliate marketing, or advertising. There are more, but these are the big ones.
2. Do your research. Pick a niche or market, brainstorm keywords and topics. Think about how you'll make money doing whatever it is you decide to do.
3. Choose a domain and web host. There are many domain registrars and hosts. I'll make recommendations on whom to choose, but we'll first describe what all this means.
4. Website. Choose what kind of website, be it a “standard” HTML website or a blog. I suggest you start out with a WordPress blog because you can find many themes and plugins for free that you can use in your site that will either enhance the user experience, make Search Engine Optimization a no-brainer (relatively speaking), or make content management super-simple.
5. Add content. The best content is the content that you contribute, but you can also get guest writers and syndicated content. This can be beneficial in the beginning because you can load up your site with a lot of content before you go live.
6. Generate traffic. All other things equal, a website with 500 daily visitors will be more profitable than one with only 50 visitors. It's a numbers game, just like dating. Of course, all other things are NEVER equal, so take this one with a grain of salt. However, you still need to drive potential customers to your offering by way of your website. We'll talk about how to do that here. There are dozens of ways to drive traffic to your site, most of which will require their own sub-parts to explain in full.
7. Convert visitors to buyers. There are TONS of ways to do this. We'll most likely have to split some of the conversion tactics into separate sub-pieces because each one needs some explanation.
8. Convert one-time buyers into multiple-time buyers. It's easier than you think.
9. Convert buyers into affiliates. Get other people to drive business to your website. In short, start an affiliate program. Your business could scale bigger and faster than you ever imagined. I'll show you how here.
10. Rinse, repeat, and build it out. Some folks build a product, set up a website, and then move to another product. Or they do all that and then sell it (in Internet parlance, they “flip it”). Yet others go on to build “authority sites.” Still others keep on cranking out the products and add to their online portfolio. They all work. We'll talk here about the pros, cons, and how to do it.

That's it for this introduction to building an online business empire. Stay tuned for the next installment where we discuss the different online business models to consider usning in your own enterprise.

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