Once you have published content you want to put together a list building system so that you can capture an interested audience - your 'hungry pool of fish'. List management includes:

List Building
List Management
Segmenting
Deliverability

Tools & Templates

Ezine publishing program

Autoresponder

3 - Finance

Look at how you will finance your growing Internet business. Will you use PPC advertising from the start, or will you rely on organic growth supplemented by article publishing.

Tools & Templates

Excel Spreadsheet for budgeting

4 - Technical Requirements

When you first launch your business you will only need a simple web hosting account, a list builder/autoresponder and an HTML editor. As your business grows, you need to put good business systems in place. These are best supported by technology. If you are not comfortable doing basic tasks like installing php scripts and SQL databases, then you need to consider where to get some low cost technical expertise.

Tools & Templates

Check online for free scripts and put projects on www.elance.com for bids.

5 - Systems

Systems go hand in hand with business technology. Don't make the mistake of waiting for your business to overwhelm you and risk losing control. Put systems in place to automate as many tasks as possible. This may include:

Website and Advertisting Analytics
Article Publishing Systems
Video Publishing Systems

6- Sales

Now you have your content in place, and a system to capture interested traffic, consider your sales plan. How will you make sales? What will you sell?.

It is often best to start off with affiliate products. You get a good commission on these and they generate a good base income stream. Focus your products around your niche, and understand any seasonal buying.

You also don't need to worry about having your own shopping cart and payment system. You still need to manage two key areas:

SALES COPYWRITING

1. Sales Letters
2. Order Pages
3. Affiliate Recruitment
4. PPC Ads
5. Banner Ads
6. Emails
7. Name Captures
8. Opt-in

SALES TESTING

Need to know:

1. Customer lifecycles
2. Customer behavior

7 - Traffic

Once you have your sites 'productised' - start focussing on building up traffic. You can do this using:

Develop campaigns around specific products and use all three strategies together. The various tactics include combinations of:

1. SEO
2. Link Buying
3. Link Building
4. JV & Affiliate Recruitment
5. Viral Programs
6. PPC
7. Blogs
8. Banner Advertising
9. Buying existing & expired domains
10. RSS feeds

8 - Relationship Building

Start building a 'relationship' with your traffic. Use Blogs and ezines to help understand their needs. Use an 80:20 approach with content: sales copy. Give them 80 percent free content, and only 20 percent of your copy should focus on sales.

Be contactable - Set up an online help desk. There are very good free tools provided by your webhost, installed using Fantastico, for this purpose. You only need one help desk for all sites.

Consider relationships from various angles:

1. Testimonial Acquisition
2. Customer Service
3. Free Offers
4. Returns Processing
5. Fulfilment

9 - Marketing Analytics

This step is commonly overlooked, yet it is one of the most profitable. Simple review of your AW Stat on your web hosting account will tell you a lot about where your traffic is coming from and what search terms they are using. Also look at how long they stay on your site and where they enter and exit.

Spit testing of landing pages and PPC ads is a critical component of any sales campaign.

You don't need expensive analytics tools to learn a lot about your niche market. Test, test and test again.

Use market information from:

Niche Detective
Keywords Research
Surveys

To feed into product marketing strategies:

Upsells
Ask database activities
Bumps
Backends

10 - Build Your Business

Now that you have your first one or two sites up, you need to look at the bigger picture. To date, you have probably done most of this work yourself. As you start making a few hundred dollars a month you can afford to pass off any administrative and marketing work to online virtual resource.

You need to decide whether you are building yourself a job, or building a business. This is one of the hardest stages to transition, but it is an essential decision and step.

11 - Legal And Compliance

If you haven't already, this is a good time to review your legal responsibilites and how well you comply.

Do your sites have privacy statements and disclaimers
If you are selling your own products online, consider Better Business Bureau membership.
Do your sites comply with Visa and Mastercard programs
Ensure you have indemnity clauses built into any contract for work you use with third parties to ensure there is no copyright infringement.

Also consider:

- FTC
- Spam
- Terms of Service
- Business Licenses
- IRD Filings

12 - Affiliate Marketing

Once you have your own system running smoothly, think about expanding your sales channels using affiliates. There are some very good, and inexpensive affiliate management systems available that provide both the expertise and system tools.

NEXT: 2 - Setting Up Your Internet Business

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