Everyone wants to know how to start an online business. Honestly, starting a home business is not that hard. The problem is turning it into a successful business and not a failure. Why is it that so many people fail when they try to work at home.

Here are five keys to make sure you are in the 5% of successful entrepreneurs.

Have a Unique Product.

This needs to be a product that stands out from the thousands of other products out there. It needs to be something people really need. It should be something that will solve a problem people have. The big buttons to push are the pain and pleasure buttons.

People who are suffering are great prospects. If you can cure their problem, they will buy from you and tell all their friends about your product, as long as your product really works.

Pleasure is another good way to get people to buy. This is how to make people happy. It could be how to make money. It could be how to add 25 yards to your golf drive. Helping someone solve the problems they have with their hobbies will always be a good starting point for creating products.

If your product can do one of these things: take away pain or increase pleasure, you can find a huge market for your products.

Get the Buzz Going

After you get your product created you have to find people who are willing to buy it. You can have the best product in the world. It can really solve everyone’s problems. If no one knows about it, no one can buy it. If no one buys it, you can’t make any money.

You have to find ways to spread the word about your product. You must drive traffic to your offer. You can do this in many ways. You can write articles, create backlinks, buy advertising, and find partners.

There are multiple ways to get visitors to your website. This is one of the most important steps when you are trying to find out how to start an online business. You have to find customers or you will have no business.

Simplicity

You need to make your product easy to follow. It doesn’t matter what your target market is. It could be make money, it could be get rid of acne, or it could be where to buy model train parts. You product needs to be simple.

Create it in a way that anyone can understand it. Make the steps simple and easy to follow. If people can’t understand how to use your product, they will not recommend you to their friends. Or worse, they will ask for a refund. Be sure that anyone, and I mean anyone, can follow your instructions and get the same results you did.

Desire and Willingness to Work

You are going to have to find the motivation to work. Many people think that an online business is a ticket to overnight riches. Well in most cases it is not going to happen. You will have to work hard to be successful.

Always keep in mind that you are building a business. You will not be able to set it and forget it just yet. Until your business is up and running really well, you will have to put in a lot of time to make this successful.

Training and Support

Once you have created a product and a website what do you do now. There are many ways to grow your business. It all starts with getting customers and then expanding your business. The big question many people ask next is, How?

People are full of ideas and ready to go and start making money. They create a product and it is a great product. But then they get stuck. What should I do next? How do I do it?

You need a plan to follow. You need someone to answer your questions and tell you what to do next. With the proper training you can start with a single product and zero customers and grow that into a $100,000 a year business empire.

Being a good online business leader means not just inspiring other people to do more or showing them the best tools to use to build their own business. A good online business leader also keeps their ears open to other professional business leaders, their team members and even people they believe have nothing to offer.

I’ve been to a few seminars in my time where the speakers were millionaires and they shared with the crowd a time when after they had become successful they had sat through a seminar that cost five to ten thousand dollars. You read that right, five to ten thousand dollars to sit in a meeting and listen to someone else talk.

Sometimes the seminar would be chalk full of information that they could use to boost their business like a rocket ship. Other times the seminar would be an almost complete waste of time, a repeat of education they have already gleamed but on occasion they would hear one statement or one small kernel of knowledge that would make that seminar worth more than what they had paid.

Even rich, successful people never stop learning because they are always on the lookout for ways to keep their business on top.

I’ve also been on team training calls where the leader of the call was discussing a topic and one of their teammates knew more about the topic and shared what they knew. The leader didn’t get angry for being interrupted or condescend their teammate for making them look foolish. Instead, the leader thanked the teammate for sharing their valuable knowledge with the rest of the group and actually dedicated the rest of that call to discussing what the teammate knew on the topic.

The third experience comes from my mentor. Years ago he decided to challenge himself and earn a black belt in martial arts. He knew it would take years of dedication, training and perspiration, but the result would be worth all of it. On his first day in the dojo, he was grouped with all the experienced students as well as the newcomers. The sensei paired every student with someone of equal experience. My mentor, who was 35 at the time, found himself paired with a seven year old girl. At first he felt a little insulted because he thought, What can I possibly learn from a little girl?

That day he learned what it meant to be humble.

Everyone has been given time on this planet to acquire, develop and master certain knowledge and skills that can either mirror, compliment or surpass yours. Just because someone is different from you doesn’t mean they are less than you. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you should take the time to learn from them.

Just remember, the day you stop learning is the day you might as well hang up your apron and retire from life and a good online business leader never stops learning. Be a good business leader by being a lifetime learner.

“An education isn’t how much you committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s about being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t know.” – Anatole France 

Scott Gustafson
E-Business Expert