How to Build a Successful Online Business

Have you been searching the internet trying to find ways to make money online?

Many people search the internet and give up because a lot of programmes or systems promise loads and, regrettably, deliver very little.

We all have our own reasons to want to make money online. It might be that you have not received a pay rise for years and as everything gets more expensive you find yourself with less money to spend than you had, say, a year ago. Others, for no fault of their own, have lost their job in this tough economy. It is a known fact that in times of recession, more people start their own businesses - often with redundancy or pay-off cash that they have received from their previous employer.

Or it might be that you are getting fed up with the daily grind of working for somebody else and you simply want to be your own boss.

The five key ingredients to ensure that you build a successful onlien business are:

1. Solid Business Model

You must ensure that you have a good product or service to sell and that people will want to buy it. There have to be valid reasons why someone would want to buy it from you, rather than somebody else and the whole process must offer value and be focussed on the customer.

2. List Building Strategy

You must know how to build and maintain a list of potential customers and how to retain existing customers so that they will buy from you again.

3. A Working Marketing Funnel

This means that you have a clearly defined set of steps that your customer will go through in the sales process. For example - they start as a lead, they receive something of value for free from you, they buy a low price product, they join a membership scheme, they buy a mid-price product, they get more rewards, they buy a high price product. Then the cycle starts again.

4. Paid and Free Traffic Sources

Both free and paid traffic sources are important to growing your online business. Paid traffic can be spent very quickly on such things as pay-per-click advertising, banner ads, solo ads, classified ads and email marketing - so you have to spend your budget wisely. Free traffic, like blogging, article marketing, forum marketing and search engine optimisation takes time to learn and master.

5. Access to a Community and Mentors

This really is the main key to help you with all of the above points. When starting an online business it can seem a little overwhelming. But with support, guidance and training from those who have gone before and been successful can help you to be successful too.

It is not that you will not succeed if you don't have all of the above five elements for your online business but the most successful people have all of them in place - and that is why they are successful.