I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who was a bit discouraged because no one responded to his first attempt to deliver his offer online. I knew his disappointment was misplaced because I understood that he’d done much better than he thought. I figured I’d better write a beginner’s guide on how to sell anything online so that I could put things in perspective.

 He said to me, “I sent out a 150 text messages, one by one and only 4 people signed on to my webinar!” I was like, “hold on big fella, you managed to achieve a 2.6% close ratio, that means you needed to send out 1500 texts, not a 150; if you wanted 40 people to attend your webinar; the next thing I heard on the phone was silence. I already knew what he was thinking: “I just told this guy that it took me hours to text a 150 people and only got 4 responses, how in the heck am I going to send 1500? ” This is what we’re going to talk about in this article.

There’s a method to selling almost anything online.

I’ve been selling online since 2007 and I’m going to share with you the best information I have on the subject. 

If you want to sell online, here’s what you will need to get started:

Website 

The first thing that you are going to need is a website. I don’t know about you but when I need something these days and I want to have confidence with my selection, I’m headed to my phone; either I’m pulling up a website or I’m consulting with Google.

If you don’t have a website online you are invisible and you don’t have a way to significantly attract attention. 

Blog, YouTube Channel or Podcast

 I know people right now that have made progress getting to the 1st step; getting the website. I worked for a major newspaper in the digital marketing department. I’ve seen too many businesses that had a website but no website traffic. I used to always get a bit nervous when I had to break the news that the website they owned was a “cabin in the woods.” I’ve seen too many business owners with websites that were no more than glorious business cards.

Building a website is a little like building the “cabin in the woods” imagine you’ve built this beautiful cabin in the woods and you want to throw a party.  Well, as you can imagine, no one is going to show up to your party unless you show them how to find you.

 So, you’ve built your website, now you have to make sure that people know where you are. In order to do that you must use either one or all of three forms of media.

You use these channels, as your vehicles, to deliver valuable content to the audience you want to attract.

 Your first job is to create valuable content that will drive traffic back to your website.

• Blog 

The blog is my personal channel of choice.

A blog is the equivalent of your personal newspaper or magazine.

 For years I’ve kept personal journals and one day it occurred to me that I don’t mind writing and I put my amateur writing skills to good use.

 Writing articles is a great way to communicate your personal message or deliver valuable professional expertise. I’ve written articles that have earned me thousands of dollars.

• YouTube Channel

YouTube is like your personal TV station. If you don’t mind being in front of a camera, the YouTube channel may be the right media for you.

• Podcast

A Podcast is like your personal radio station. 
There are more, however, these are the three major ways you can deliver valuable information to an audience who waiting to make use of your expertise.

You should eventually strive to use all three channels but to get started you must use at least one and you must deliver valuable content on a regular basis. This will establish you as an expert in your field and consequently draw people to your website.

So, we can see how important it is to find channels that we are comfortable with.

 Now we want to discuss the importance of something called SEO or search engine optimization.

 SEO 

Once you’ve decided on which media channel to use, you will need to start publishing content. I won’t elaborate on the process here because I’ve written another post that’s dedicated to seo alone, but if you are going to deliver valuable content make sure that people are looking for what you plan to deliver.

Never write an article, make a video or do a Podcast until you find out if someone is searching for what you’re going to communicate.  If you do you’ll be wasting your time.

 Paid Ads

You can also pay for traffic and target people who are intrested and what you are selling but that can be expensive if you’re not experienced, so I’ll cover paid ads once we start making some money. 

Growing an Email List

If you haven’t heard the news yet, let me be the first to break it to you. Please work on growing your email list.

 Now that you’ve built your website and you’ve started to get traffic to your website, the next and very important step is to start collecting emails.

I’m telling you this because I’ve already lived through the mistake of not collecting emails.

I sold hair care online for three years casually collecting emails that I never used. By the time I discovered the great secret of collecting emails, I’d already collected 350 emails. By the next year my email list grew to 4,400 and my business exploded online for the first time.

Analytics

Finally, make sure you have an analytical tool connected to your website.

As you probably already know, what you can measure, you can grow.

You must have a way to measure your website traffic and conversion data.

Without an analytical tool, you’ll be operating blind.

Conclusion 

Selling online these days is definitely the way to go. Get yourself a website, deliver valuable content so that your potential customers can count on you for advice.

Next, start collecting emails as soon as you can so that you will have a warm customer base to sell to; it’s tough to sell to strangers.

Finally, make sure that you have a method to analyze your efforts.