Six Figure Boss - Make Money Online Create Your Own Web Business

Transcription

SixFigureBoss.com
Create Your Own Online Business
& Market it for Exploding Sales
Part 1 - By aspkin
SixFigureBoss.com
Disclaimer
License Terms
This course is for your own personal use ONLY. It is STRICTLY PROHIBITED to reproduce the content
enclosed herein or to distribute this course to any third party, or via any third party website. All content
is protected by Copyright ©
Income Disclaimer
This document contains business strategies, marketing methods and other business advice that,
regardless of my own results and experience, may not produce the same results (or any results) for you.
I make absolutely no guarantee, expressed or implied that by following the advice below you will make
any money or improve current profits, as there are several factors and variables that come into play
regarding any given business.
Primarily, results will depend on the nature of the product or business model, the conditions of the
marketplace, the experience of the individual, the application of said principles, and situations and
elements that are beyond your control.
As with any business endeavor, you assume all risk related to investment and money based on your own
discretion and at your own potential expense.
Liability Disclaimer
By reading this document, you assume all risks associated with using the advice given below, with a full
understanding that you, solely, are responsible for anything that may occur as a result of putting this
information into action in any way, and regardless of your interpretation of the advice.
You further agree that the author cannot be held responsible in any way for the success or failure of your
business as a result of the information presented below.
It is your responsibility to conduct your own due diligence regarding the safe and successful operation
of your business if you intend to apply any of this information in any way to your business operation.
SixFigureBoss.com | aspkin © 2013
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My First Online Business
I'm extremely excited to get started and help you with your online business!
I grew up with AOL and dial-up access; broadband internet was a luxury at the time and just rolling out in different
parts of the city.
As far as computers went I was only interested in online games (StarCraft!) and Instant Messaging with friends.
I had an interest in how websites worked but it might as well had been a foreign language because there were so
many unknowns I didn't know where to begin.
It wasn't until several years later when one day a friend showed me a little “trick”, as he called it.
He brought up notepad.exe on my computer, typed a few things into it and saved the file as index.html. He then
opened the file and to my surprise, it launched my web browser and displayed the text “Hello World!”
Eureka! It's this VERY basic HTML code which turned on a light bulb
in my head. It helped me understand what it took to create a website.
I never would have imagined a few years later I would have my own online business, started from scratch, making
nearly $100,000 in sales each month!
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My friend showed me some basic HTML code which he memorized. From there I took the time to learn HTML
and soon I was experimenting with my own websites on free Web Hosting services.
I have come a long way from Notepad.exe and basic HTML code.
Don’t worry; you won’t need to learn HTML or any other programming
languages to get started. You can get by using 3rd party software as I'll
show later in the guide.
It took a weekend to learn HTML by the way, couple that with CSS and
other scripting languages, it's not very difficult to learn so if you have the
time I recommend taking a look into it but it's not mandatory to move
forward.
Creating websites for me was just a hobby at this point.
It wasn't until a couple years later that I discovered a niche I could get into
and start making serious cash with, and that's what I did!
How I Got Started
At first I was just doing business with a few competing websites as a
wholesale supplier (I'll get more into this a little later).
While working with these businesses I figured out how they operated,
how their business worked and how they powered their websites. I
decided I could build my own competing business and sell products at
a much cheaper price, undercutting the competition. At the time I
understood HTML well enough and I was also playing around with
PHP and other scripting languages.
I was learning from the ground up.
I studied the businesses I worked with. I looked at their source-code and found that they used something called
a ‘shopping cart’ to run their website. I saw that they were using a well-known payment processor (PayPal) to
process orders. I did test orders with them, and I sold wholesale products to them. I knew how much they paid
for their products and how much they resold products. I knew their checkout process and since they were buying
from me and other suppliers, I knew the product was in HIGH demand.
I had found my first business!
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You guys are LUCKY!
I didn’t have anyone to learn from or guide me step-by-step as this system will do for you. I made a lot of mistakes
and for various reasons almost lost the business a couple of times. But that’s great news for you because I'm
passing ALL my knowledge to you in this guide. I’ll show you what you should and shouldn’t do and give you
all the details you need to have a leg up on your competition and succeed in the long run.
A lot of hard work has gone into writing this guide. I recommend reading it at least twice before you get started
with your own online business.
There is one last thing I want to say before we get started. While there were a lot
of things that kept me motivated to finish my website and start making money
from it as soon as possible, the main thing that kept me going in the right
direction and to which I credit to my success is my to-do list.
It’s simple really. I went out and bought a large notepad and wrote down
everything I needed to do to create my online business, from beginning to end. It
was a place to organize my thoughts, work on new strategies and get things
done. I still have that notepad today as a memento.
I have since moved on to online to-do list but I find actual pen and paper and the
ability to scratch items off as I complete them much more addicting then clicking buttons. Otherwise I recommend
Sandglaz (it's what I use today), Todoist and Astrid.
Since I went live with my first business I have been self-employed ever since, that's nearly 10 years of good times.
I eventually sold my first business and branched out to other sources of online income. What you’ll learn from this
guide won't just be information to start your own online business; it’s the foundation of every method to making
money online today.
With the knowledge you’ll gain, you will have the ability to diversify and earn a full time income online.
I hope you're getting excited!
Let’s get started!
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Straight to the Point!
Making money online is easy!
That’s right, I said it. There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of ways
you can make money online. You can be a freelance worker; you can sell
stuff on 3rd party marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Craigslist; you can
become an affiliate marketer and promote other people’s products for
commission; you can even create your OWN products. All it takes is the right
knowledge and the determination to start making money online.
I need you to believe in yourself and your abilities; that you have what it takes
to create an online income for yourself. It may seem impossible at first, but
let me assure you that if you follow all the steps below and take ACTION, you
WILL succeed and create a new source of income. I want you to succeed!
What’s your idea of making money online?
I’ll tell you mine! It’s to create as many PASSIVE streams of income as possible!
In this guide we’re going to primarily focus on selling a product or service from your own website (in my opinion
the most profitable, and sustainable way to make money online), but with the knowledge you’ll gain here, you’ll
be able to branch out and expand your money making abilities into all the other fields of making money online.
That’s right, everything you need to succeed with any other online money making venture is in this guide!
Just to give you an idea of some of the other methods to making money online, I’ll list what are in my opinion the
Top 7 Online Money Making Strategies below…
Tip: The more streams of passive income you have, the better. Not
only will you make more money, but you’ll have other sources of
income to take up the slack if for some reason one part of your
business takes a hit.
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The Top 7 Methods of Making Money Online
Different Online Business Models to Think About
1. EBay & Amazon
You can sell products on eBay and Amazon and make quick sales. The downside is that you’re stuck in their limited
world of high fees and ever expanding rules on what you can and cannot do. Not to mention the HIGH competition
and fraud you can experience. It’s a great starting place for anyone new to making money online and I encourage
you to use this method alongside other ventures you take up but it's not a long term growth business.
2. Freelance Work / Virtual Assistant
Doing freelance work can vary in its ability to make money online. You’ll find that the competition is tough and the
pay is not as good as you’d like, but the demand for quality professional services will always be there. Jobs include
niche content writing, help-desk services, researching, coding, design, marketing, etc. It’s a high demand job in
which you’ll be working for someone else, usually by the hour. I don’t know about you, but working for someone
else and limiting my income potential doesn’t excite me as much as working for myself.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing (promoting another person’s product for commission) is a great way to make money online.
It’s harder to do without a website, however. We’ll talk about how with affiliate marketing you can increase your
back-end income. Don’t look at affiliate marketing as the end-all to making money online; look at it as the icing
on the cake. You’ll want to focus on your main product or service first and then use affiliate marketing for
increased income. I’ll talk more about this later on in the guide, the sky is the limit to how much you can earn with
affiliate marketing when done correctly.
Know: Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each
visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.
4. Selling Your Own Products or Services
While most people make money online by reselling another company's product or service as an affiliate or retail
merchant, after while you'll figure out it's much more profitable to have your own product or service in which you
control. Instead of being the affiliate, you're the vendor. And it can be anything really: a service, physical
product or even a digital product. The demand obviously has to be there, and you’ll have to do the proper
research as I detail in the next chapter, but imagine combining your own product(s) with affiliate marketing! This
is where you start making big money online!
Don't have a product? Don't worry, it's only a suggestion, I'm flexible and while having your own product is
hugely profitable, sourcing products at wholesale prices can be just as profitable. I'll detail both sourcing
products and creating your own products later.
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With your own product or service sold from your own platform (website), you're able to take advantage of
advance marketing strategies not permitted on 3rd party marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon. You're able
to collect leads, promote affiliated offers, cross-sell products, up-sell and more. I'll show you how to do this later
in the guide. Where before you were limited in how much money you could make, selling your own products and
services under your own platform removes those limits. Add in affiliate marketing, coupled with automation and
you have yourself a powerful asset that makes you money for years!
5. Selling in Forums, Bulletin Boards, Classified websites, etc.
Unlike selling on sites like eBay and Amazon, this method is usually free or has minimal costs. The only difference
is the additional overhead. You have to be on top of your marketing or your sales will slip. I like to use forums to
sell niche related products and services.
Let’s say you find a forum for people who have Bulldogs. What sort of service could you offer these people? The
easiest way to figure that out is locate the most viewed and commented threads in these forums. I can tell you
right now that anything dog related is hot and won’t ever go away. A topic that comes up often with people who
have dogs is dog training. Maybe you’re a dog trainer and can offer your advice to these people. And that’s the
BEST way to use these types of forums: you offer your advice and in addition you add a link
to your product or an affiliate product that you recommend in your forum signature. One step
further would be to instead send these people to a squeeze page (discussed later), collect
emails, and market to these people for years with products they’re interested in. That’s how
successful internet marketers think.
When you become a trusted forum member, people will naturally want to know more about you and the products
and services you can provide that will help them. It’s this trust that will enable you to easily sell to these people
like there is no tomorrow. The only problem is that forums don’t like spam. You have to offer quality advice and
never directly push your product or service to members or you can be booted from the forum. Selling on
forums and classified sites is an art. I’ll talk more about this in the traffic generation part of the guide.
6. Blogging
Yes, blogging can make money. What most people don’t realize though is that it can take YEARS before you build
up your brand and have enough visitors each and every day to warrant creating a product or promoting affiliate
products. You can’t just start a blog, slap on dozens of ads and expect to start making money right away. You
have to build up your followers first and then give them what they want. The aspkin.com blog (my blog) started
in 2003, and, believe it or not, it didn’t start making money until 2008 when I added a forum to the site.
Blogging is a great way to build up your company brand -- it’s a great addition to any business -- but it’s not the
business itself. Like affiliate marketing, use blogging as a tool rather than an end in itself. People make money by
SELLING something (in one way or another). Blogging can be a platform to reach your customers, capture leads.
It’s not the most efficient platform, but it has a lot of potential if you have the patience. I’ll talk more about
blogging in the traffic generation part of the guide.
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7. Your Own Website (ecommerce, squeeze pages, sales pages, etc.)
You can sell on 3rd party marketplaces like eBay and Amazon and make money, but
you’re limited in what you can do and how much money you can make. With
your own website you’re building something that won’t disappear overnight,
and as your website grows so does the amount of money you can
potentially make. Selling a product or service is how a person makes
money, right? A lot of the methods I’ve talked about will require a website
to be effective. You want to be able to collect emails and send out offers
to your subscribers. You want to have a central location your customers
can easily find you. You want to look more professional in your
customer’s eyes, with your own website the sky is the limit.
We Start from Nothing...
Throughout this guide I give you tips and tricks to maximize your online income. I encourage you to include
several if not all the strategies listed above in your business. Remember, your goal is to eventually have multiple
steams of online income.
I know some of this may sound daunting or even impossible for some of you, but remember at one point we all
start from nothing. The people making the big bucks today had only an idea and they took it upon themselves to
take action and become a success.
I’ll show you exactly what I’ve learned over the years as an Internet Marketer. I don’t consider myself an expert
in all fields of marketing but what I do know I’ve learned from actually doing. Everything that I’m going to show
you I’ve done and what you’ll read is my experience in its success or failure. This guide as in all my guides is
straight to the point and without fluff. I’ll show you step-by-step exactly what you need to do in order to create
a successful online business in just weeks. Yes within weeks or even days if you’re fast enough I fully expect you
to have your business online and taking orders! I’ll show you what you need to do to take action now; I’ll give you
what no one else has given you to make sure you’re a success.
Next I’ll overview the four parts of this guide in order to structure your thinking for the journey ahead.
I’m getting excited now… I hope you are too!
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Overview of the 4-Parts to Six Figure Boss
Part 1: Niche and Product Selection
The first and most important part of starting ANY business is niche research! In this section I’ll show you how to
find the right niche for you, how to research your competition and then source products.
Many people think product first and then research only to find out there is no demand for
their product or service, or that the competition is too strong. This is the wrong approach.
I'll explain why in the next section.
Part 2: Website Creation
After you figure out your niche, then it’s time to set up shop! Our primary focus in this section will be e-commerce
type websites but we'll also cover sales pages and squeeze pages which I'll explain in detail. The strategies
and tips in this section can be applied to all website types.
We'll get your website online and optimize it to increase conversions. If you have a website
established already it's still very important to READ this section because of all the extra tidbits of
information included. I'll show you my best practices and strategies that I've used to dominate
competition in any niche.
If you need help installing your website I'll even show you how to get that done for FREE. We'll
talk about best shopping carts to use, website aesthetics and more.
Part 3: Traffic Activation
Once we have your website online I’ll show you how to best generate targeted traffic to start making money
from day one! A website without traffic won't go anywhere.
I spent most of my time in this section because of the overwhelming demand for traffic
generation strategies. I extensively cover PPC, Social Media, YouTube, SEO, Email
Marketing and many other strategies. I have been doing this for nearly 10-years and
everything I've learned over this period of time and the strategies I use today are in this
section. I'm really happy with the outcome of this part of the guide and will continue
adding content to this section as strategies evolve.
Part 4: Bonus Material
In this section I give away all the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years as an internet marketer. It’s these
extra tidbits of information that can make or break your business. Learn from my mistakes and you'll make a lot
of money online! I cover outsourcing your work, increasing conversions, fraud protection, selling virtual items,
other ways to make money from your website and a lot more.
Ready? Let’s get started with Niche & Product Research!
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Part 1: Niche & Product Research
People ask me all the time, “How do I start my own online business?”, and to tell you the truth. I cringe whenever
I hear those words. Just the thought of trying to explain to someone in a few short words what they need to do
to create a successful online business, it makes me sick to my stomach.
Starting a SUCCESSFUL online business requires more than just putting up a website and
waiting for the orders to roll in. Sure, a person can get lucky and do well from the beginning;
but with the proper research and know-how you can increase your chances of success tenfold.
You have an idea, okay. You know it’s going to do well and you’re going to make a lot of money with it. Fine, I like
a positive attitude. But have you researched the competition? How many other websites are already doing what
you want to do? Do you know the buying trends for your product? Is it seasonal? Is the demand going up or is it
going down? These are the sort of questions you should be asking yourself.
When I started my business I was lucky: by working with the competition (as a wholesaler) I learned pretty much
everything I needed to know about how the business worked and who my competition was before I got started.
You might sell your product(s) in a large marketplace like eBay or Amazon and you may know a little about its
demand, profitability and competition; or you might have a new product or idea and have no clue about it. That’s
where niche and product research comes into play.
Regardless of how well you think you know your product, go through the steps below and learn more. I’ll show
you how to obtain all the details you need to know about the product you’re interested in as well as information
on your competition before setting up shop. If you don’t have a product or service just yet, that’s fine. I
recommend finding the right niche first and then working on a product or service to promote.
The more you know about the demand, profitability and the degree of competition before getting started
with your business, the better your chances of success will be. With that said, let’s move forward!
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Step 1: Niche Selection
In this section I’ll show you how to distinguish great niches from dead or dying niches. You’ll learn about
evergreen niches, sub-niches and transitional niches. We’ll then brainstorm niche ideas, quickly check market
trends and determine the viability of the niche you’re interested in before moving forward.
First off, what is a niche? A niche simply refers to a distinct segment of a
market in which your business will compete in to sell products and services.
For example “dog training” is a very popular niche that is always in demand.
A few sub-niches for “dog training” might include: “Bulldog Training”,
“German Shepherd Training”, “Golden Retriever Training”, etc.
The Top Tier Niches are Health, Wealth and Relationships, these are
considered evergreen niches. An evergreen niche is a niche which is in high
demand all year long and is extremely lucrative. You’ll want to focus on evergreen niches because there will
always be a demand for products and services in these niches. Evergreen niches have customers who buy
impulsively, on intuition, or because they have a burning need or desire for the product or service they are
seeking. It’s also three areas of people's lives, where nearly everyone in the world wants to improve.
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Everyone wants to be Healthier right?
Everyone wants to have More Money.
Everyone wants to have better Relationships with friends, lovers and families.
Example Evergreen Sub-Niches: There are thousands and thousands of sub-niches…
Health (sub-niches)
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Weight Loss
Health & Fitness
Muscle Gain
Anti-Aging
Acne
Hair Loss
Bodybuilding
Mental Health
Bad breath cures
How to get six pack abs
Etc.
Wealth (sub-niches)
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Making Money Online
Home Business
Credit problems
Gambling
Internet Marketing
Avoid Foreclosure
Investing
Etc.
Relationships (sub-niches)
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Dating
Wedding Planning
Divorce
How to be better in bed
How to get back with your
ex-lover
How to seduce a man/woman
Etc.
You’ll want to focus on sub-niches and even sub-sub-evergreen-niches with less competition. The reason for
this is that sub-niches will take less time and effort to break into. It makes more sense to focus on a smaller niche
that you can put all your expertise and focus on rather than broad niches.
Right now you don’t need to worry too much about sub-niches, just have it in the back of your
head that focusing on a broad niche isn’t the best of ideas.
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So what makes a great niche?
At this point you should understand a little more about what a niche is and that an evergreen niche equals good!
Congrats! You already know more than most people. However what is really happening within evergreen niches?
The thing I notice most is that evergreen niches tend to attract people who are in
transitional periods – for example: times when a person is struggling in a
relationship or trying to lose weight. People in transitional periods are focused
on improving themselves with use of multiple products or services usually
within the same niche. Does your product or service fill a need for
someone in a transitional period? If it does you’re in great shape.
To expand more on this, a good example would be a person who is going
through a divorce. Not only would this person need a number of services
(lawyers, movers, realtors, maybe a new accountant) but a variety of products
as well (whatever they lost or gained in the divorce). These are highly
motived people who just want to have fixed whatever problem they’re having
and move forward. These people need multiple products and services and this is
where you can capitalize! If you offer one service, why not offer complementary services as an affiliate for added
income? This is why it’s important to research your niche and to keep in contact with your customers to make sure
you’re offering them what they want. We’ll learn more about this later on.
What are some Transitional Niches?
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Having a Baby (new furniture, baby clothes, education, accessories)
Moving (movers, new furniture, new house, inspections, mortgage, insurance, etc)
Buying a Car (inspection, insurance, loan, warranty)
Buying a House (inspection, insurance, loan, warranty, movers, title company)
Weight Loss (new clothes, food, information on weight loss, training, gym membership)
Divorce (lawyers, movers, etc.)
Getting a new pet (pet training, pet food, veterinarian, grooming)
New Job (resume, clothes, car, relocation, training)
Note: Obsessions are where people eagerly spend money on things like golf, fishing, pets and gaming. These
are also very profitable evergreen niches that are in high demand.
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Finding Your Niche
What we’re going to do next is brainstorm niche ideas.
Note: This is not the time for analyzing ideas or digging deeper just yet. We’ll get to that a little later.
Take Action: Take a few minutes to answer the following questions in a separate notepad. Your goal is to come
up with at least 10 niche ideas that we’ll look into them further in the next sections. I answered according to my
own personal experiences but you’ll want to come up with your own ideas.
Q: What are you passionate about?
Marketing, Writing, eBay, Amazon, Blogging, Building Websites, Making Money, Health, Fitness
Q: What previous or current issues/challenges/problems have you solved in the past?
ADHD, Lost Weight, became physical fit, learned to eat better, nutrition, Exercise
Q: What are your hobbies/sports? What do you engage in on a regular basis that you know a lot about?
Paintball, Call of Duty, Marketing, Weight Lifting, Soccer
Q: What do you do for a living? Could you be considered an expert?
Internet marketer, technical writing, eBay, Amazon, Website Building, eCommerce
So what’s the point of this? It’s important to be passionate about whatever niche you choose to jump into if
you plan to do well with it for the long haul. The difference between those who succeed and those who give up
has a lot to do with passion. If you have no interest in the product or service you choose to work with, then it’s
going to be hard to stick with it.
Also if you’re an expert on a subject, you cured something that a lot of people have issue with or you’re really good
in your hobbies, you’ll have a leg up on the competition. I had bad ADHD at one point... I cured that shit after
months of research and you know what I’m going to do when I have time? I’m going to write a How to Cure Your
ADHD by aspkin… same with weight loss. I lost weight and became fit after months of research. I’ll probably
focus on the ADHD guide first because it’s not as saturated as weight loss but you get the point.
Anything that you have experience with is great. If you have the leg up on a good supplier for products you’re
interested in, write it down. Anything that you have experience with or that you enjoy could potentially be a niche
idea to focus on.
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Note: Don’t worry about whether your ideas will be profitable or not at this stage. Your main goal is to generate
as many ideas/topics as possible.
Narrowing Down Your Niche Ideas
Now we’re going to quickly go through your niche ideas and select the best 2-3 ideas to
focus on. Once we find a niche or two that shows promise we’ll then learn more about the
competition and the type of products and services people are demanding in that niche. This is
where a lot of people fail. They think product first and then they take a look at the niche only to find out the
demand isn’t there or the competition is too strong.
Take Action: Go through your list and ask yourself the following questions for each item you have written down.
1. Is your niche idea considered evergreen? Remember an evergreen niche is a niche which is in high
demand all year long and is extremely lucrative. Try and focus on evergreen niches.
2. Is your niche idea transitional? Remember customers in transitional periods are focused on
improving themselves with use of multiple products or services usually within the same niche. If your
niche is transitional and you can easily think of complementary products, you’re in good shape.
3. Is your niche idea in a magazine? I like to check how many magazines
there are on the subject of my chosen niche. In MOST cases, IF there is a
magazine for that niche then it’s a profitable niche and you’ll be able to make
money from it…
There are two places I go online for that:
Magazines.com and Amazon Magazine Subscriptions
I search by category to find the magazines in my niche; the more magazines
on a subject the better, up to a point. For example, golf has a lot of
magazines, but you don’t want to focus on Golf itself, instead you want to target
its sub-niches. Going through magazines can help you locate great sub-niches to focus on.
4. How is your niche idea trending? Next, we’re going to use Google Trends to see how your niche idea
is trending. Follow the link above and enter your niche idea into the search box, example weight loss.
Note the top searches, rising searches and even breakout search terms returned by Google. These are
sub-niches you may want to look into further. If search trends are is going down, then you should
probably select a different niche idea to focus on.
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So let’s say you work at a health and wellness store and you have a lot of experience with supplements and other
health related products. So your niche ideas might include: “Vitamins”, “Supplements” & “Health Products”. Right
away you know these terms are evergreen because they fall under the health niche. People take vitamins to keep
mentally and physical strong. This niche can be considered transitional because customers in this niche are
working to better themselves. Doing a quick search with Google Insight for the keyword ‘supplement’, I learn that
‘Acai supplement’, ‘vitamin D’ and ‘fish oil’ are among the rising search terms returned, meaning they are in strong
demand and potential sub-niche products.
Select a few of your top niches ideas that interest you and meet the recommendations listed above
and move on to the next section. Next we’ll look into market trends and competition.
Step 2: Market & Competition
Once you have an idea of the niche you want to pursue, the next step is to learn more about the competition and
how you can position yourself within that niche. In this case our main focus will be the competition in the three
major search engines: Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
While there are other marketplaces to think about, our focus for right now will be the
major search engines. Other marketplaces include eBay, Amazon, YouTube,
Facebook and other social networks.
We’ll talk more about these marketplaces later on in the guide.
As a business owner with your own website you’re not limited to only ONE
marketplace as you would be if you were selling on sites like eBay or Amazon. You’re
free to expand, rank higher and advertise your business to your heart’s content. As a result
you open yourself up to a lot more traffic and potential sales.
One Search Engine to Rule Them All
Google as a company receives over a BILLION visitors per month and has the largest penetration of online
advertising across the web. Microsoft (Bing) receives over 900 million visitors a month. And Yahoo comes in at
over 600 million visitors a month. If you were to focus on just one search engine, it would have to be Google.
You’ll get traffic from Yahoo! and Bing as well, but I can pretty much guarantee you’ll get the majority of your
traffic from Google. With that said let’s see what the competition is up to.
15
Researching the Competition
Let’s pretend the niche I want to focus on will be bean bag chairs.
The first thing I would do is search for the term ‘Bean Bag Chairs’ in Google and check who my competitors are
(look for the sponsored links on the top and right side of the search results) and what they’re doing.
Having just looked at a few sites, I noticed that they’re all using a shopping cart and offering multiple payment
options; their websites look both colorful and professional; and there seems to be a decent amount of
competition, telling me that there’s a market for bean bag chairs.
Task: For your particular niche you would want to do a Google search and visit a few sponsored
links on the top and right side of the search results.
Review the Competition with these Questions in Mind
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
What products and services does your competition offer? Would your product range be better?
What is their pricing structure? Would you be able to offer a better deal?
Are their customers satisfied? Could you provide better customer service?
Would you buy from that company? Why or why not?
Who is their target market? Is it the same as yours?
What do they offer that you don’t? Conversely, what do you offer that they don’t?
Does the site “feel” authoritative? If so, why do you think that is?
Spying on the Competition
This is how I do it...
Once you find who your competitors are, contact a few by email and ask them about
either becoming a supplier or that you’re interested in buying in bulk, etc. This is not your
intention, of course, but it’s a quick way to learn more about the competition.
What are you trying to learn?
1. Where They Source Their Supplies
Whether they have a sweat shop in China making products or if they have dedicated
suppliers; any details you can get will help you source your own products and services.
2. How Much They Pay Suppliers
If you know this information you can better understand their profit margin, with that you know how much
leverage you have if you have to deal with your competition in the future. This is important if you become a
re-seller of their product or service later on. It's good information to know on how to price your wares, etc.
16
3. How Their Website Functions
Go through their checkout processes, how efficient is it? Is it easy to checkout? Are there things that you would
do differently? Do they have people on live chat? Are support emails answered quickly? Learn how their website
functions from top to bottom, this is all great information for when you're ready to setup shop.
4. How Orders Are Processed
Again go through the checkout process from beginning to end to get a feel for how it works. What are the different
elements that come together to form the checkout process? Is there a shopping cart? Or is it strictly a direct
payment button? Who is their payment processor? What does the Thank You page say? How is delivery of the
product handled? How is the service?
Some of this information you can learn just by poking around your competition's website, but for specific supplier
information you will need to talk to your competition under the guise of becoming a supplier. The more legitimate
you sound as a supplier the better because the reply back will be more peer level rather customer/merchant. You
will get more specific details back than any customer would. Keep the conversation going if you can, you obviously
don't want to let them know you’re doing research on becoming their competition. That would be
counterproductive.
Testing the Competition
It's a good idea to do test orders with the top two or three sellers in your niche. You’ll see how their checkout
process works, how their packaging is done and their speed of delivery.
Research like this goes a long way for planning your own website. The more you know about your competition,
how their websites work and who their suppliers are, the easier it will be for you to build a successful website.
TIP: Use Google Alerts.
I like to use Google Alerts to keep an eye on the competition. If a new product is released I’ll know about it
instantly, if my competition is trying something new, I’ll know before most people. This is also good to see new
trends in the market and to get a leg up on new competition before they are established.
17
Other Tools to Check Out:
SocialMention: A great site that will keep you updated about what’s being said in the social networks about your
brand, company, marketing campaign, etc. You can create alerts to notify you on updates similar to Google Alerts.
SiteExplorer: This website is a little different, it’s best used to keep an eye on your competition’s website. It will
tell you where they’re getting their backlinks from, keywords targeted and you can even compare websites using
this tool. It’s part of SEOMoz Tools.
SpyFu: If you’re interested in the keywords your competition is PAYING for then give this tool a try. Not only will
it tell you about paid keywords targeted by your competition, but it will tell you what keywords they’re ranking for
in the search engines organically. This will help when it comes to paid traffic and SEO in the future.
Others tools worth checking out (we'll expand on these later):




SEMrush
Ahrefs
Screaming Frog SEO
WebMeUp SEO Tools
How Can You Position Yourself?

Focus on doing better than the competition; maybe offer a lower price, faster
delivery, better customer service or even a better product.

Give customers what they want, stay in contact with them and offer related
products and services, etc. (we’ll expand on this later)
In the next section we’ll go over how to determine the products and services in demand
for your niche. You may have an idea of what product and service you want to promote
already but the demand has to be there first.
Moving forward!
18
Step 3: Product Selection
Let’s find you a product or service to sell!
You have a great niche idea; you know more about your competition
and how to better position yourself. Now what product or service
should you offer people in your niche?
Even if you know the product or service you want to promote already
I highly recommend going through the steps below to see what
customers in your niche really want. You may find out something
about your niche that wasn’t exactly clear before.
Let’s take a look at what’s in demand.
Deciding on what product or service you will promote should be based on a simple principle: there should be a
demand for the product or service. You want to offer something that people actually need, something that will
make their lives better, make them feel better physically, make them look better, or help them solve a problem.
That said… let’s see what's in demand in your niche!
We'll use a number of methods to see what's selling now and what people want.
1. Forums/Discussion Groups
What I like to do is frequent places where people in a niche tend to congregate. A lot of the time that’s a forum
somewhere. So let’s find a forum, search in Google (niche idea + forum). Locate a few forums related to your
niche and start investigating. Our job is to find out what people are interested in within these forums. Once you’re
in a big forum, just look at the threads that have the most views and responses which indicate hot topics. The
great thing here is that the very people you’re trying to sell to are actively telling you what challenges they’re
facing. Later you can use forums to market your product and services. We’ll talk more about that later.
You want to focus on repeated issues that popup and products that people talk about often.
Hint: I’m part of a forum where I actively discuss different marketing strategies. In this forum I found that a
certain topic which I know a lot about kept coming up. I decided to write
a how-to guide on the subject and I was actually able to sell that guide
within the forum, making thousands of dollars in just the first month.
It took some time to put the guide together but once I was done, I was
able to create a sellers thread within the forum and push my guide to
other people and it SOLD! I included a link in my forum signature which
pointed back to my seller thread and the more I posted hints and tips in
the forum, the more SALES I made. It’s a simple system really.
19
Even to this day I still get sales for work that took me a few weeks to put together.
Now this is just one example but imagine starting a business this way? You find your niche; you start your own
website and use the power of forums to drive traffic? This is only a small example of what is possible… if you’re
not getting excited about this then drink some coffee and wake up. :)
2. Large Online Marketplaces
I like to use sites like eBay and Amazon to see what’s hot in certain niches. These are huge buying portals that
attract millions of buyers and sellers every day. What we’re going to do is review top selling products by category.
This will tell us more about what’s in demand in your niche and give ideas on what sort of product(s) you’ll want
to focus on.
Amazon.com
First off let’s see what’s selling on Amazon. I recommend
checking out the Bestsellers List, it’s a list of the most
popular products being sold on Amazon right now. All you
have to do is select the category you’re interested in and from there you can drill down further and select
sub-categories. This is a great way to quickly brainstorm new products ideas.
Amazon will display the most popular products in each category. If you’re looking to get in on a rising
trend, Amazon Movers & Shakers is another area you should keep an eye on. These are the biggest-gaining
products in the Amazon Marketplace over the past 24 hours. Use Movers & Shakers to spot products that are
rising quickly in popularity.
Tip: Amazon has millions of items, and hence millions of root keyword items. Don’t just look at product names,
also use categories and the words you see within the descriptions to spark new ideas.
eBay.com
Second I recommend checking out eBay, you’ll want to start with eBay Pulse,
which will show you the most popular searches and the top watched items in
the marketplace. You can select to view searches and popular items by
category. This will quickly tell you what products are in high demand for any
niche you’re interested in.
Tip: If you go to this categories listings page on eBay, you will see many more categories than usual. Also, if you
click “See All … Categories” you will see much more details.
20
Note: If you're trying to break into a highly competitive, saturated, notoriously low-margin market (like
mainstream electronics for example), you either need to have a supplier that gives you rock-bottom prices or be
prepared for thin profit margins on your products.
TIP: Use the list below to help locate top selling products in other large marketplaces. If it’s a top selling product,
then you know there’s huge demand for it and that it’s selling well.
Top Online Marketplaces (Visits per Month)
eBay (73.45M)
Amazon (78.44M)
Craigslist (63.33M)
eBay Classifieds (14.16k)
Yahoo! Shopping
Overstock.com (12.61M)
WalMart (48.07M)
CafePress (4.91M)
Zazzle (5.03M)
Etsy (6.85M)
Jasmere (26.51k)
CreateSpace (339.75k)
Oodle.com (5.47M)
eCrater.com (1.32M)
Sears (18.69M)
Buy.com (3.23M)
Half.com (1.55M)
iOffer (2.3M)
YardSellr (435.86k)
ArtFire (657.90k)
RubyLane (555.58k)
NewEgg (4.74M)
Glyde (165.15k)
Fiverr (161.30k)
TigerDirect (3.28M)
Tias.com (236.43k)
BluJay (174.85k)
CyberAttic (59.62k)
Bonanzle.com (9.95k)
PriceGrabber (2.87M)
eBid (267.05k)
cqOut (19.42k)
Bid4Assets (90.59k)
uBid (267.29k)
OnlineAuction.com (86.17k)
Top Auction Sites by Category
21
Wholesale Suppliers
Where Your Profit is made!
Most merchants (sellers) that I know work with
(wholesale) suppliers from places like China and India.
Selling virtual products (virtual items for online
games), 90% of my suppliers were from China.
If you played World of Warcraft, you probably
remember those notorious 'Gold Farmers' who
wreaked havoc in the game; we hired factories of
these people to supply us around the clock. We
eventually setup our own factories, hired managers to
run the place and squeezed out the middleman.
I started out as the supplier, I did the grunt work.
I soon found that I wanted to spread out my risk by offering different products and services. I obviously couldn't
do all the work by myself, not to mention I wanted to focus on the business, it's marketing, rather than get sucked
up as the supplier. In order to expand, you have to have others help. I worked with my competition, sourced
suppliers directly and listened when others wanted to supply for my business.
The GREAT thing about having your own website, your own platform, is that suppliers COME TO YOU. Every day
I had people wanting to supply me, they would either email me directly or contact us via Live Chat that we had.
Sellers and suppliers work together for mutual benefit.
We need each other to make money online, we work together and form relationships, and it’s just a little easier
when you have your own platform. You're a known competitor, suppliers come to you at cut throat prices, and
they want to sell you their goods. It took a little while to become established and known as a real competitor but
once my business was known, I would have dozens of suppliers a day knocking at my door.
The same can be said for any niche, suppliers are out there, they just don't see you if you don't have a presence
online, that's why we have wholesale marketplaces such as DHGate and Liquidation.com, these type of
websites cater to those who sale without their own platform, the eBay and Amazon sellers. The sad thing is these
sorts of sellers (without platforms) pay much more than they should and leave suppliers with all the power.
Suppliers on large marketplaces have hundreds of people trying to purchase their goods so there is little incentive
to waver in price or offer any special deals. It's a different story with your own website (platform).
22
Having your own platform brings in Suppliers
If you have the platform, you dictate the terms; you can negotiate better rates and play suppliers off each other,
that's what I do. I NEVER rely on just one supplier for a product or service I provide. That's the great thing about
having your own platform, suppliers come to you, they want your business and you can use that to your benefit!
It doesn't matter if you have a physical or virtual product, even if you provide a service, you can outsource and
source wholesale suppliers for any product or service. Depending on your product or service, you can even use
oDesk, Elance and even 3rd party forums that offer services, you resale that for profit. The sky is the limit!
Finding Suppliers Yourself
After doing your research and figuring out the type of product or service you want to provide, it’s time to source
a supplier. If you already have a product and a good supplier lined up, then you can skip this section. If you're in
a hurry, you don't have any suppliers to work with just yet, than you can work with large wholesale directories.
There are thousands of wholesale suppliers on specialty websites looking for sellers just like you.
Dealing With Suppliers on Specialty Wholesale Websites
Warning: There are scammers out there who will play on your
inexperience, those who will take your money in a heartbeat if you let them.
We’ll go over how you can minimize your risk next.
There are a couple things you need to know before diving into the world of wholesale.. first off I highly
recommend that if you're going to work with wholesale marketplaces like DHGate, that you only deal with GOLD
Rated Wholesalers (the highest rated sellers) listed on specialty websites like on DHGate.
Don’t waste your time with unproven sellers who might take your money and run.
Second, once you find a product or service that you're interested in than you need to question your wholesaler
until you feel they are someone you can trust. I like to ask about business websites and previous clients (you can
gain a lot of information here). Ask for contact information and contact those buyers.
23
Dealing with Suppliers that Contact You Directly
If you work with suppliers who contact you directly (through your website), you can usually vet them better but
at the end of the day it's best to get the product or service first than pay for their services.
Wholesale Suppliers who are serious won't have a problem with this because they will already trust you (you have
a website, a presence online and you're not going anytime soon.), they will trust that you won't scam them; they
will take the risk and hope that you are legit to have further business with you. Those that ask for payment up
front aren't worth your time. It's only okay if you personally know them, their business or have dealt with them
in the past, even than it's risky.
If everything is looking good I would then ask the seller for one or two sample units of the product or service in
question. Most legitimate sellers are willing to do an initial sample order; just let them know you’re looking to do
high volume every month. Be prepared to pay retail price for sample orders.
Personally I have dealt with my competition for supplies as well of having wholesaler suppliers. You’ll almost
always get a better rate from a wholesale supplier. As time passes you’ll get to know your suppliers better and
trust will build. It’s a mutual benefit and the wholesaler knows that if they rip you off they lose your business, so
it’s in their best interest not to do this… however it can and does happen.
Story Time! The Supplier That ALMOST Screwed Me!
I had a supplier who I only did small orders with once or twice a week, orders less than 1k each time and payment
was sent via Western Union. I ALWAYS took supply first and then paid the guy. We had a mutual trust, I
needed him and he needed me.. or so I thought.
It worked out well for many months… then one day he requested to get paid first. He had
to “pay his team” and could deliver later in the day.
Well, guess what happened?
He took off and I didn’t hear from him for a FULL WEEK after money was sent. He knew
what he was doing, I had a bad feeling about giving money up front but I went ahead with
it because I knew we needed each other.
So a week goes by and he comes back to me to apologize for doing what he did. He messed up and knew it. I told
him I found a new supplier and didn’t need him anymore, etc. He offered to give me a large discount from now
on… so I took him back but only if I took the merchandise up front from that period onwards. Of course he agreed
and things were fine after that.. I knew this guy pretty well, so I'm one for giving a second chance.
Moral of the story is that even though you can build up trust with your supplier -- it doesn't mean you should
expose yourself to the off chance of getting scammed. Always make it in your supplier’s best interest to deliver the
goods (tell them you'll buy more in the future). And if at all possible, accept delivery of the goods first before
sending money.
24
Sending Money to Your Supplier
NEVER PAY VIA WESTERN UNION, WIRE TRANSFER, or BANK TRANSFERS
It’s a VERY BAD idea to pay via Western Union to a supplier you don’t know if you don't receive the goods ahead
of time. I only did it because I got the product up front but generally that’s not a normal way to do business. In
my situation the supplier wanted to prove to me that he could deliver on what he promised, it was his way to get
his foot in the door so to speak. It worked for us because he needed me and I needed him, we trusted each other..
to an extent.
If you’re going to do business with people overseas, pay on your terms. You should either use
PayPal.com, Escrow.com, COD, letter of credit, or credit card.
PayPal.com – If you do end up getting scammed, you can file a dispute and do a
charge back as long as a credit card is linked to your account and not a debit card.
Plus, when you’re about to send someone money via PayPal you can see whether
or not they are a verified user before sending funds (I usually stick with verified users if I'm using PayPal).
Escrow.com – Escrow works like an intermediary; they hold the payment until you confirm
that you received the goods. I have used Escrow.com in the past for large transactions. The fee
is high (I usually split the costs or have the supplier eat it), but it's a safe way to go.
I only use Escrow.com; I avoid other escrow services as they’re often run by scammers.
COD – Cash on delivery is a great way of paying, however it’s becoming less and less common. I have found
wholesalers in the past that are still willing to use this method though.
Letter of Credit – This is similar to an escrow system but run through your bank. Your bank will freeze the funds
in your account and contact the sellers bank letting them know that you are waiting for the goods. Once the goods
are received, your bank will then release the funds to the seller’s account.
Credit Card – This is my last resort. I would have to be pretty sure about my transaction to use a credit card.
However, in a worst case scenario you can do a charge back and then simply cancel the credit card.
Note: Use your common sense when interacting with wholesale suppliers. If they recommend using Western
Union or an outside escrow service for payment then it's probably better to move on. It’s better to be safe
than lose your money.
I don't want to scare you away from wholesale suppliers. I have done thousands of deals with suppliers and only
a small fraction have attempted to scam me, if I were to guess it would be less than 1% of transactions.
Wholesale supplier’s need you just as much as you need them, make it clear when dealing with suppliers that you
will purchase again in the future if things work out. Spread out your risk and don't rely on just one supplier. Don't
put yourself in the position to get scammed; don't leave suppliers with the power if at all possible.
Remember you make your money on the buy, the better deal you get at wholesale, the more money you'll make
at the end of the day, and that's what we're in business for, making money.
25
Wholesale Websites and Supplier Directories
Better Websites
Ali Expess
Taobao
DHGate.com
Global Sources
TradeTang.com
 Trade Key





Ok Websites
Wholesale Lists
 iOffer.com
 EBSilk.com
 MadeInChina.com
Wholesale Central
Doba
Salehoo
Wholesale Designer
Handbags
 Liquidation




Stay Away
 Alibaba.com
If you need a larger list of wholesaler sources, I recommend SaleHoo Sourcing Directory. Their database
currently has over 5000 suppliers and is updated almost daily. To help protect clients, they buy and test products
of new suppliers they introduce.
Using Search Engines to Find Suppliers
If you can’t find what you’re looking for from any of the above websites, try Google.
As I mentioned before, spy on your competition, talk to them and see where they're getting their suppliers from;
in the next section I'll show you how to sell your competition's products.
Search for the specific product you're looking for in search engines like Google, and add ‘wholesale’, ‘supplier’,
or ‘factory’ to your search. You might be surprised with the kind of results that pop up, the amount of suppliers
ready to work with you. The good thing about going this route is that you can research who you're working with,
their website reviews. You'll want to talk to these suppliers, let them know who you are, your platform and you'd
be surprise at the willingness of them wanting to work with you.
An example search might be: [product] [country] wholesaler (or) drop shipper, or supplier, or factory or
anything else.
You can try something like “iPhone wholesaler” or “Nike shoes supplier”.
Tip: Don't be afraid to negotiate pricing! Suppliers want to move their inventory and often have wiggle room on
shipping charges or bulk quantity discounts.
Next I’ll explain how I turned my competition against each other for my business!
26
Selling Your Competition’s Products
Another tactic I want to suggest is reselling your competitor’s products.
Now I’m not talking about anything sneaky or illegal, but instead communicating with your competition about
buying their extra supplies (lots of it) at a discount. This tactic may not be needed if you have a solid supplier, but
if you don’t, this can get you out of a bind one day. It actually transformed my business, not only because my
product was high risk and holding it was dangerous, but because my suppliers weren’t always there.
What I would do is get to know a lot of the top sellers in my niche. I would contact them,
let them know who I was and ask them for discounts on their product either for a long
term partnership or for buying in bulk. (Before you do this, note that I was already an
established merchant and most of my competitors knew who I was.)
Surprisingly, most agreed to supply me at a discount; there were even bidding wars for
my business at times. Instead of going through unreliable wholesalers, I went directly to
my competition and cut my risk in half.
That said most products aren’t risky to hold. I had the unfortunate pleasure of having a product with a short shelf
life, and it was much better for me to resell my competitor’s products and pass the risk on to them.
This enabled me to add more products to my website than I actually had, and since I had many suppliers I was
never caught without supplies. My suppliers even delivered for me, so I was down to very little overhead.
I went from almost losing my business (I’ll talk about that later) to making tons of money overnight. It was a great
feeling! Later on I figured out this is what you call drop shipping.
If it works, then don’t knock it. Sure I would have made more profit if I
bought and held stock myself but the overhead and risk involved made
that hard to do. We’ll talk more about this strategy later on in the guide.
Hopefully at this point you have a niche you’re interested in, you know
more about the competition and you know where you can source a
product (if needed).
At this point you’re pretty much set to open up shop.
Normally I would test the market to make sure the product I wanted to promote was truly in high demand and
would be successful before investing the time and money into creating a full ecommerce website, but for the
sake of moving forward I’ll skip that for now.
If you like in the bonus section of the guide, the end of the guide, I explain how you can test the market before
opening shop. Later you may want to go to this section and follow the steps to test the market. It’s not a required
step but its good idea to do as it will help show you the demand you can expect before you open shop.
Next I’ll show you how to create your website! Let’s get started!
27
So there you go!
Next we’ll talk about website creation, I’ll walk you step by step or even set up your website for you, I’ll detail
more information about this later.
Than once you have a website, whether that’s a shopping cart, sales page or squeeze page to collect leads, I
detail how to create each of these pages in SFB, it’s time to open up shop!
A website without traffic is worthless, I’ll detail step-by-step how to generate targeted traffic for you website,
including PPC, Social, YouTube, Email Marketing, SEO, Join Ventures and other strategies.
Making money online is easy, there is a step-by-step formula and SFB has that laid out for you.
This is just the beginning, I wanted to quickly give you what you needed to find a niche that you were interested
in and show you how to source a product.
Next because I know most like virtual products, if you read the email I sent you about the reasons why, then you’ll
understand. I’ll send you an email about creating virtual products and selling them.
If you’re not on the email list, go to SixFigureBoss.com and enter your email and we’ll catch up.
Stay tuned for the next email, I’ll detail how you’ll get that PDF document and where we’ll go from there, I’m
excited! Yep, I’m drinking tea!
Later I’ll detail how to generate targeted traffic for your website, let me know what you want me to talk about and
I’ll focus on that, it’s all about you.
Talk to you soon!
Donald,
http://www.sixfigureboss.com/
28

Six Figure Boss - Make Money Online Create Your Own Web Business

Transcription

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