Succeeding Online

Succeeding online is a mysterious game. There is so much out there now on how to build a high traffic website that it’s almost impossible to cut through the jungle and hear through all the noise on the internet today. Everyone wants to sell some product that when you order there a bunch of extra features you need to pay for.

The purpose of this page is to provide a few pointers for succeeding online. This is coming me, who has failed and succeeded in online pursuits.

Find a Reliable Host

First and foremost you need a reliable host. I have had sites hosted with hacks that have a 50 percent downtime. That’s huge. You want your site to be up and attracting visitors at least 99.99 percent of the time. If your host can’t honestly provide that then find another one. Seriously, shopping for a great host is one of the most important things you can do.

This site is hosted with a company called SBI. They not only host the site but they also provide the most comprehensive service and features available today. I’m not joking. SBI has all features built into their initial package. Most people who follow the SBI action guide properly end up out-performing the larger corporations’ sites. It’s almost a take-you-by-the-hand, monkey-can-do-it service. What’s also impressive is that in the several years I have had my site up and running I have never once experienced downtime, not even two minutes worth. They have a back-up server or something. When they do site maintenance you are notified, yet the site is still up during such maintenance.

So yeah, a great host, one that you can rely on is one of the most important things top consider for succeeding online. Without it you will fail big time. What’s the point of a site or domain name that is inaccessible for even a fraction of time.

Visit SBI and check out their video action guide by clicking here. I recommend you even check it out if you never had any intention of starting an online business. They make succeeding online so easy that people who rarely used the internet before can start an online business and quit their day job.

Build content that people will find valuable

Forget about succeeding online if you are unwilling to provide valuable, original content that people will come back to and refer to others. This is possibly one of the biggest issues with new online businesses. So many people are concerned with what they will sell that they forget to get traffic. You can only sell stuff and get clicks on your PPC ads if a lot of people visit your site. If you don’t provide a steady stream of content that acts as a valuable resource you will not increase traffic. Without traffic you have no customers or anyone to click your ads. This of course means no money for you, which equals a big fat failure.

People use the internet to find information and to buy. However you will rarely find someone who just happens to come across a salesy page you put together and then clicks the banner and buys the affiliate product on the other end. People need to find information and resources. It is so frustrating for a person when they type in keywords looking for fitness tips or something and landing on sales page after sales page without finding any valuable FREE information. By the time they reach your they don’t even want to read past the first sentence. But if you provide value in the form a sound information then your visitor will stick around. They might click some of your Google ads and buy some products. Ca-ching, you make money, the visitor gets the information they want and everyone wins.

Here is an example of a niche site with some great content. And yep, you guessed it, they are using SBI!

ZenTactics.com - Are you having trouble with anger, depression, self-esteem, or relationship issues? Find the practical personal development skills to help you deal with these problems and others caused by child abuse.

Don’t be too broad, narrow your niche a little. But don‘t be too narrow either.

Ok, I know, this site itself is pretty broad on the topic of human potential. This has made it harder for me to rank well for certain keywords but allows for greater potential for traffic long term. There is a middle ground to finding and establishing a niche that is in demand. You could go ultra broad and then get just passing visitors, or you could go ultra narrow and get every single person on the planet who is interested in your topic to visit your site, which might only be 200 people.

Those who are succeeding online are the ones that have established a niche that has a high demand and then maximised their positioning and content to attract this demand. Starting a site about books in general is far too broad for someone starting an online business. There are literally millions of sites about books. How will your visitors find you in all that noise? More important, why will they visit your site in particular with so much else to choose from?

On the other hand, if you start a site with the theme being something like books printed before 1945 about African silk worm mating habits then you may have the opposite problem. You will be the only one out there with that niche so visitors looking for that specifically will find your site, it may even be the only Google search result for the term. However, the amount of people actually searching this narrow niche will be minimal and your traffic potential will top out very fast and at a less than adequate figure.

Again SBI has a comprehensive feature that helps you get your niche perfect. They have a brainstorm tool that ensures you only use profitable keywords that have a high demand. click here for a video demonstration.

Work on it

Succeeding online is not a “build it and they will come” type of deal. This is the allure for many people. There are hundreds of millions of people using the internet every day, so the natural assumption for many people is that if they put up a website then millions of people will visit it and they will be overnight millionaires. This is sadly not the case. I get asked the “if it’s that easy then why doesn’t everyone do it?” question quite often. My response is always the same, I always tell people that it’s not get rich quick. If you do it right then it’s as sound, if not more so, as a bricks-and-mortar business.

A real business needs real work to make it happen. Succeeding online is not a lazy way to make money. I work on adding valuable content to this site every single day. The more work you do initially, the more it will pay off long term. You see, the hard work only needs to be done once for each effort, then it continues to yield results for years to come. It’s an exponential business where the more you do the more it grows and the more it grows the faster it continues to grow, which results in a business that multiplies on itself, it doesn’t just add.

Please the humans first, the search engines second

I see to many people writing simply to get search engine rankings. But what’s the point of good search engine rankings if no one wants to read the mindless drivel they come across when they click the search result?

You need to please humans with your content, you also need to be ranked well by search engines. To please both just write valuable content and include a popular, high demand, high profitability keyword several times throughout your page. If you focus on building content that people will find extremely valuable then you will have repeat visitors that will bring others with them. Succeeding online is not just about getting heaps of Google traffic, people have to want to stick around and then come back tomorrow.

SBI has integrated tools that literally astound me in this area. I can’t even begin to imagine what Ken Evoy, the SBI founder had to learn to create these tools. It’s pretty much a full time job getting it right all on your own. There is just too much to learn. Believe me I’ve been there. I spent years building a site that looked great but made no money. I spent literally hours a day researching how to get it right and still drew a blank. Now I get to focus on building valuable content and watch my traffic rise and my income multiply.

If you forget everything else in this article just remember this last one and you will be well on your way

Genuinely give value. It’s simple, if you provide value then succeeding online is almost a certainty. If you continuously provide something that people find useful then they will visit your site. That’s why I started this site, to provide something of value, to help people to expand and grow to their own potential. I sometimes write for many hours on topics I know will help people. That’s another reason I have recommended SBI several times in this article. It’s because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone who uses it and follows the action guide will succeed.

I get so frustrated when I come across websites that just want to sell me something without first providing something of value. Why would I part with my money or click on your ads if you haven’t pre-sold me and provided me with a compelling reason to do so?

That’s my greatest piece of advice for succeeding online, give give give. If your site is a one-stop resource of never-ending value then why would people go elsewhere?

Here’s the link again for the SBI video action guide.

If you have any questions about succeeding online or to ask me about my personal success online, feel free to contact me using the form below.

Yours in Human Potential,

Chris Lyons.

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