Singapore Web Hosting Blog

first of all, chinese new year is only one day ahead. i would like to take this opportunity to

Wish You All A year of Good Health, Peace and Prosperity!
Gong Xi Fa Cai!

looking back, we’ve been doing businesses online with fun and profit for 4 years.

5 or 6 years ago, i could not imagine i would run a few online businesses successfully 5 years later. at that time, the only Internet related thing i used effectively was email. when time flies, i’ve learnt a lot and done several e-commerce sites.

and before i knew it, i started answering questions, teaching people how to start online business, some people even call me “expert”.

i’ve seen many people that want to bring business online but never start taking any action. here are the top 3 reasons they told me that keep them from starting online business. in my mind, none of these shoud stop you.

1)i’m not an expert of anything.

people assume they must be an expert in order to start. no, you do not have to be. i know little about Internet 5 years ago. but then again, who knew much about Internet 5 years ago? if you did, what about 10 years ago? did you know the term “Internet” 20 years ago?

some people think i’m expert in SEO and online business but i knew nothing in this industry 5 years ago. my point is, you can become expert of any topic as long as you want to learn. and you do not have to be expert before you start.

you can learn while your doing it.

also, everyone knows something that others do not know. many people would like to learn the knowledge from you. think about your day job, your interests, your life experience. i’m 100% you have some knowledge that you can share with others.

2)is making money online real?

people have heard of scary stories. dotcom burst, online scams, making money quick nonsense… many people have impression that most of online businesses are in grey area: adult, spam, scam…

it’s true that there’re tons of rubbish online.

on the other hand, tens of thousnads of people are running honest online businesses selling all kinds of products and services successfully. i’m not referring to the big boys like ebay, amazon. i mean small businesses run by everage joe.

yes it is real. i’m living example

3)i’ve tried many times with no success

it’s not for everyone, that’s for sure. but chances are, you tried wrong path.

starting and running online business is like running offline business. it takes time, work, money, effort, commitment. but compared with real world businesses, it requires less resources significantly.

but you cannot join a downline club and hope you will be rich in next few months. you cannot jump from great opportunity to another great opportunity. most of these opportunities you find in emails are just nonsense, by the way.

you need to spend time to build your business from ground up.

once again, happy chinese new year.

and see ya online !

although i use “how to start online business” as title of this post, it’s really a vague question, still often asked by visitors and clients.

it will be a 500-hundred-pages-book’s content to answer this question in detail (well not in very detail yet). and one single person can hardly have expertise in all aspects of online business. i’m confident to say i have hands-on experience starting and running small businesses online and make it profitable, however so far i have not much experience in, say, legal issues, formal copy writing, manage bigger team that all work for same web site, etc. there might be many things you have to go through along the way.

in this post i’m going to share a few of my thoughts that you must consider before starting.

1)always do careful research before doing any other thing. what products or services to sell? which market? local or worldwide? adults or teenagers? is the market saturated (it does not mean you have no chance, but you have to plan for it.)? what’s your selling points?

i’m not MBA, i’ve never taken any business related course. i’m telling from experience, market research is extremely important.

do NOT fall in love with your products. do people really want it and would buy it online?

2)be realistic when you start. somehow people tend to associate online business with “make money quick” stuffs. not at all. online business is like any other business, you have to work hard, if not harder.

do not expect to make good money on your very first web site. if you do, well done. if you don’t, it’s ordinary. that is, if you work hard.

you have to spend time and money in your business, same for online businesses. i’m amazed receiving emails asking if we can bring his site to number 1 in google for 200 dollars. be realistic, no such good thing. in the real world, few people would ask TV station to run their commercial for 10 years for 200 bucks, in cyberworld, don’t think it’s possible either.

3)solid marketing plan. you have to think of how to present your great product or service to visitors. how would they find your fantastic sales pitch in the first place. it would not happen automatically.

if your site is supporting channel for existing clients and you do not intend to use web site as marketing channge at all, that’s fine. it can be profitable as well since you can cut cost significantly sometimes by making use of web site.

if you would generate sales online, you have to drop the “build it then see how it goes” mindset. you have to have solid marketing plan that would work upfront.

4)you do not have to have a perfect system to start. it’s rather impossible to set up a perfect system. on our web sites there’re still many things that do not work the way they should, i have to admit. but we have to start from somewhere.

i would suggest you do it now, do it quick. of course always do market research and plan well first.

i just read the news that corey rudl, one of the top internet marketers, a true pioneer of internet business industry, dies at 34 in a racing crash. this is very very sad.

although many people do not agree to his internet marketing tactics, but he’s the real guru. if you have been looking for business oppotunities online for a while, you must have heard of his name, otherwise, your time wasted.

no, i do not agree to many of his techniques either, however i did learn a lot from him. i really mean a lot. the first book i bought online was his internet marketing course, which cost me 200 US dollars. it’s not cheap for me honestly considering the average price of books, hypes all over the world, etc.

i’m glad i made the right decision. all my online businesses start from corey rudl’s internet marketing course.

in fact i didn’t use much of his tactics. it’s not because the tactics do not work. i believe they work greatly, otherwise it’s impossible that millions of people have heard of him. it’s because i’m rather lazy. however, just a few tips here and there from corey’s marketing course has enabled me make my living online.

the most important thing he taught me is confidence and overall concept. after reading his course and his newsletters, i know for sure online business works for many people, and if i do it the right way, it would work for me.

now i run a few sites, all profitable. thanks, corey.

i visited his web site, no news posted there. not a surprise. the news itself does not confirm the victim was this internet marketing goru corey rudl. but his name is rather rare, many forums are talking about this shocking news at this moment. most likely it’s true. very sad news.

condolences to his family.