Start Your Own Online Business

In this lesson, you'll learn how you can build a business brand that's ready to be launched online. First, you'll discover some secrets about developing a powerful and recognizable name for your business. Next, you'll learn how you can quickly and easily stake claim to that business name throughout the Internet. After that, you'll examine ways that you can get a logo to support your business branding. Finally, you'll gain an understanding of the importance of keywords and learn how to craft an effective keyword strategy for your business.

In this lesson, you'll see how to create products and services that you can sell as part of your online business. First, you'll explore the various types of products and services and how to build them. Next, you'll consider what makes a "good" product and zero in on the right product for you. Finally, you'll look at how to tackle building your product, from creating your product development plan to leveraging your past efforts to build your product more quickly and efficiently.

In this lesson, you'll tackle the task of creating and launching a business website. You'll gain an understanding of what type of website you should build and learn how to align it with your business strategy. Then you'll see how to develop an outline for your website, wireframe individual pages, and create or find the content that you'll need to make your web pages come alive. After that, you'll explore ways to build and launch your website without having to know anything about website design or coding. Finally, you'll learn what it means to "host" your website.

In this lesson, you'll first gain an understanding of the basics of selling products on the Internet and learn how to design and document a sales process that aligns with your business strategy. Next, you'll learn how to how to implement your newly created sales process by selecting the right mix of third-party tools and accounts that work with your website to conduct business transactions online. Finally, you'll examine how you can monitor, track, and measure the effectiveness of your sales process and use that information to increase your sales over time.

In this lesson, you'll learn what a digital communication network is and why you need to develop one for your business. Next, you'll gain an understanding of the different types of digital communication methods and how you can use each to engage and develop relationships with your followers. Finally, you'll examine some advanced strategies that you can use to optimize and automate your communication with your prospects and customers on a consistent basis.

In this lesson, you'll first learn about the importance of utilizing an email management system to communicate with your prospects and customers. Next, you'll examine how you can set up your system, write engaging content, and deliver emails in a timely and automated manner. Finally, you'll explore some advanced email marketing strategies that you can put to use to help to grow your email list and increase engagement.

In this lesson, you'll build a foundation for using social media to grow your business. You'll gain an understanding of the definition of social media, and explore key principles to make sure that you're using social media in the right way. Next, you'll learn about a process you can follow to consistently and effectively engage with prospects and customers. Finally, you'll learn about different ways to generate and publish content quickly and easily.

In this lesson, you'll examine the importance of generating leads to maintain a healthy and vibrant online business. First, you'll explore the concept of a lead generation process and review the types that exist. Next, you'll produce a lead generation strategy that is customized for your business. Finally, the lesson will outline the steps necessary to implement and systematize the lead generation processes that you have selected to drive targeted prospects to your website.

Why should you consider using video as one of your main lead generation processes to grow your online business? In this lesson, you'll find out why. The lesson will show you some steps that you can take to create effective videos without being a video expert. Next, you'll take a peek at basic and advanced methods to create and distribute videos to gain exposure for your online business. Finally, you'll learn how to host, record, and automate the delivery of videos through webinars.

In this lesson, you'll gain an understanding of how you can build a partnership program to introduce more people to your online business. First, you'll learn what a partner program is and how it can help grow your business. Next, you'll explore the key aspects of any partnership program and how to integrate it into your website. Finally, you'll examine some key strategies for introducing your partnership program to prospects as well as new and future customers to generate an ongoing stream of fresh leads.

In this lesson, you'll see how to implement an online support center for your business. First, you'll learn about the type of expectations that online customers have for customer service and support, and then examine the important pieces of any online support center. Next, you'll explore both basic and advanced ways that you can provide customer service support over the Internet and investigate various support solutions that you can use. Finally, you'll examine some key strategies for engaging with new and legacy customers to maximize customer satisfaction and to minimize refunds.