Here’s another in the question and answer series of Ask Laura regarding Getting Started.

This gentleman wrote me because he wanted to start a side business online and return to a rural lifestyle away from the city. However, he couldn’t think of an idea for his online business!

Although this email is quite old (2004) and has focus on info-products and ebay selling (two areas which are harder to make money at now), the premise still stands. You must have a passion and an interest in your business to really make it online.

‘Making it online’ could be making money, making a name for yourself, or making a website that grows to huge proportion and has an exit strategy.

The conversation begins with defining yourself, your hobbies, your interests and ends with an idea for an online business.

Ideas for Online Business - Ask Laura (August 30, 2004)

Hello Laura:

I am 48 and my wife is 38. We have no kids living with us. My wife is from a town of about 15,000 in Indiana, and I grew up in a town about the same size in California. We have lived in *edited* for the last 12 years. The income here is good, and housing can be had for a reasonable percent of your wages.
Read more…

Search by: business online, making money

tags: Ask Laura author: Laura comments: 1 Comment

Making IT Online is not as easy as it was just a few years ago. When I first began, back in 1996, you could just slap up a website, throw some traffic at it and start making sales.

Of course it was also a lot more expensive to get started back then as well. Domain names were $35/year and hosting costs were out of this world. Back then I traded my website designer hours in exchange for hosting fees. Today however you can start your online business for less than $13! An $8 domain name and a $5/month hosting account and you’re set to go, get some content up and start selling!

But with the lower cost comes stronger competition and a lot more of it!

It barely matters what your interest, target market, or niche is - there are hundreds of sites, owners, and products clamoring for your attention. And your wallet.

The answers to making it online are no longer a petty mix of having a product to sell, getting traffic to a website, a little search engine optimization, and building a list.

No. The secrets to success online (and I mean real success, not just $1000 a month success), are now buried underneath a higher learning curve, powerful alliances, resonating with your market, letting your personality shine through, and staying on top of the newest and hottest techniques in online marketing, promotion. You’ve got to have your hand on the pulse at all times - in fact, you have to be the pulse in your marketplace!

This site has been designed to help you through all that. I’m still in ‘build’ mode, so the high end knowledge is not here yet, but it is coming. First we must get the basics out of the way and that is what the Ask Laura section aims to do. Real questions, from real people, with real answers. If you don’t ‘get it’ then leave a comment on the post or article that doesn’t make sense to you and I’ll reply shortly.

If you already have the basics down, it is time to head into the online learning tutorials. The very first has begun at profiting from the public domain. More will be following shortly.

As always if you need me, use the contact form - linked from every page in either the top bar or the extreme right sidebar.

Laura Childs
www.makemoneywithyourideas.com

Search by: online marketing

tags: Uncategorized author: Laura comments: No Comments

Some would tell you that online promotion and marketing is easy, common sense, or that a successful online business can be established overnight. Others will tell you to buy their ebook or home study course where in 2 days, 3 audio files and 40 pages you can begin raking in big fat world wide web checks.

Learn to Market and Promote in 40 Pages or Less - Ask Laura (July 20/06)

“Ha!,” I say!

Internet marketing, website promotion, online business building is indeed very easy - to those that know the game or have already established a presence. But to the un-initiated, the un-taught, and sadly the opportunists who believe it can happen overnight - well, that’s a different story.

Just yesterday I received an email from a very smart and university educated friend of mine. He’s been relying, for the past two months, on Read more…

tags: Ask Laura author: Laura comments: No Comments

Clients, friends, subscribers and online readers are regularly sending me notices about new marketing products, tools, software, and automated website builders.

Sometimes the creators or developers send me pre-launch products to assess as well. (If you’re a developer or programmer you can contact me for this service via the contact form.)

This post in no way is meant to say these tools aren’t useful or helpful to your online business. Except when you are buying tools left and right, solutions and products in the hundreds of dollars monthly, and you haven’t made your first cent online yet.

Stop the Madness! - Ask Laura (July 18/06)

One of my mentoring clients - who is yet to get his business represented online and making any money, but who has Read more…

tags: Ask Laura author: Laura comments: No Comments

There will be quite a few of these question and answer series in the Ask Laura section of makemoneywithyourideas.com - I get a lot like the one that follows below.

As you’ll see, there are many ways to build and promote a business online, even more ways to make money from your efforts.

Your First Website - Ask Laura (August 24, 2005)

Laura,

I have been researching all the guru’s on the net trying to decide how I should go about starting a web project I have in mind.

What bothers me is so many experts that give out different “solutions”. I guess in reality, there really are many Read more…

tags: Ask Laura author: Laura comments: No Comments