In the online space, it is the dream of many persons to learn how to start online freelance business for beginners and make lots of money from it.

But not everyone who venture into it comes out successful at the end of the day.

These days, to be successful at it, you must know the ins and outs of how to start, the right approach, items needed, how feasible it is and everything else.

Hence, the essence of why we are writing this article guide exclusively for you.

In this guide, we will hold you by the hand and lead you through the steps needed to start up a freelance business and the right approach to maximize your chances of success.

So without any time waste, lets get down to business.

SPECIAL NOTE: If you don’t have much time to read, feel free to click on any of these category topics that interests you for quick access.

Why Start An Online Business

First, you need to ask yourself this very important question: Why am i starting this freelance business?

What is the motive behind it?

There maybe some good reasons for setting up one:

– You need an extra source of income to augment your salary.
– It is cheaper to setup as compared to other businesses
– You want to sack your boss and be on your own
– You want to practicalize your skills to make money from it
– You want to just do something entirely different from your main work.
– You want to be financially independent and control your own resources.
– Etc

But, whatever the reason is, it is up to you to figure it out so it will be easy for you to fine-tune your channel of concentration towards the type of freelance business and achieving a 6-figure one at that.

Now, for you and those who might ponder the importance of setting up and running a freelance business online, the advantages are as stated below;

Advantages of starting up an online freelancing business

1. It costs a lot less to start an online business
2. You do not need to hire any staff
3. You do not need an office or other commercial premises
4. You can start an online business today
5. You just need a computer or mobile device and a connection to the Internet
6. Work from anywhere
7. Set your own hours
8. People are used to making purchases online these days
9. You do not need any technical skills
10. You can outsource different tasks to freelancers
11. And many more.

But wait a second.

Don’t get it twisted, thinking that setting up one is going to be like a plug and play.

NO!

Or you will be heading for doom.

The truth of the matter is that you still need to make some investments (financial or otherwise) and make sacrifices to achieve the business of your dreams.

For example, if you go into ecommerce business by setting up a website,

you still need to promote such website using search engine optimization (SEO), paid ads or other promotional methods to create awareness and reach out to a large audience on the web.

And definitely, you might need to part with some cash to get that done.

What about setting up a website itself?

You need a web hosting provider and a domain name and these costs money as well.

Don’t also forget about its tools e.g. Computer system, internet modem, table setup, cable etc.

And many others like that depending on the type of business you want to set up.

So you see, all businesses comes with its own challenges.

But why everyone including me, will recommend you going online as compared to the brick-and-mortar business are just the reasons i have stated above.

Hope you get my point?

Good!

Lets continue.

Now, on the flip side, you might ask yourself these questions;

What about my full-time job?

Do i quit?

OR do i combine the two?

How do i go about it?

It depends.

If you can cope with running the two, Fine!

No problem.

But if one may jeopardize the other, then concentrating on just one will be the best option especially if it requires that you be online always responding to clients, delivering jobs, replying messages etc.

But here is my stand-point as per this issue.

Listen very carefully.

DO NOT quit your full-time job immediately or soonest.

There is absolutely no guarantee that you begin raking in lots of cash immediately or within first few months of setting up your online business.

Try run the two until the online biz begin to gain traction of which then you can quit you full-time job and focus fully on the other.

But if you are financially very strong and can stand on your own, good! you can tender your resignation letter.

Infact, you will have an undivided attention and full focus towards your online business which will indirectly increase your potentials of achieving your goal time-wise.

Once all these has been sorted out, the next step is to study the kind of business you want to venture into and go for it which leads us to out second chapter; What type of freelance business online suits you?

Different Types Of Online Freelance Businesses To Choose From

Since the evolution of the internet, it has lead to the emergence of all sorts of businesses that you can run online from the comfort of your home or anywhere in the world.

And the most important of this is that through the power of internet, your business can reach out to vast number of potential customers across the world.

So, lets check out these various sorts of the most prominent online businesses very critically.

So you can clearly and convincingly choose the one that suits your skills, lifestyle, financial status and personality.

Let go.

But wait a minute, before we check them out, there is an important question here: What Niche do i go into?

There are literally thousands of niches where you can create a 6 figure online business.

If you are an expert in a particular niche then this is always a good place to start.

It doesn’t matter if you are not an expert in a chosen niche because you can always learn.

When choosing a niche you need to consider two things:

– Is there a big demand?
– Is there money in the niche?

Both of these are very important.

You do not want to enter a niche where there is little demand.

You may be interested in a particular topic, but if nobody else is then your online business will fail.

We suggest that you choose an evergreen niche. This is a niche where the demand is always there 24/7, 365 days.

As far as we are concerned, these are the top 3 evergreen niches where there is always demand and the potential to make a lot of money

1. Wealth creation (making money
2. Health and fitness (weight loss is a classic niche)
3. Personal development – relationships, self improvement, spirituality, Law of Attraction etc

There are other large evergreen niches as well and we are not saying that these are the only ones you should consider.

But these are tried and tested and there will always be demand for them and money making opportunities.

If there is high demand for a niche but it is difficult to make money then you should avoid this.

These days, there are opportunities in most niches but you need to be sure that you can make good money from the niche that you choose.

Affiliate Marketing

If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing, the concept is pretty simple and straight-forward.

It is a win-win situation where a manufacturer will bid for promoters (affiliates) for his products and offer and pay rewards(commission) to such affiliates for their efforts in promoting his products when sales are made through them(affiliates).

The image below simply describes it;

Your only job as an affiliate marketer is to promote the products and services of such vendors.

You do not have to concern yourself with product delivery or customer service.

All you have to do is drive targeted traffic to the affiliate products through an affiliate link given to you by your vendor and if a customer makes a purchase through your link, you earn a commission for it.

The commission is a certain percentage of the total cost of the products and can be 20%, 50%, 60% or even as high as 100%.

There exist various affiliate platforms which you can search for products to market of which the popular ones are:

Below are 2 of the top affiliate platforms that offer good commissions;

Clickbank

JVZOO

Aside these affiliate sites, you can still bid to promote products/services of individual/companies and make money from it.

For example, getresponse, a company that offers email marketing services is seeking for affiliates

And if you apply, you get paid a $100 ONE-OFF or 30% recurring commission for every sale made through your affiliate link.

That is their policy

And one thing i love about this form of affiliate business is that while you put your promotional strategies in place, you just sit, relax and watch your commission grow on a daily basis as sales comes in.

So it is up to you.

You can give it a try and see how it goes.

ECOMMERCE

Do you like the idea of setting up your own online store and selling physical products from it?

If so, then this method is for you.

And guess what?

It is one form of business that is hassle-free and very profitable.

All you do is to purchase products direct from manufacturers or wholesalers, sell at a higher rate and keep the change(profit) to yourself.

You can make as high as 100%, 200% or even 500% profit from it and even make money hosting other sellers products too.

We have a good number of eCommerce stores such as amazon, alibaba, bestbuy, walmart, jumia, konga, ebay and many others.

ebay

And having gain good reputation and popularity over the years are making zillions of dollars everyday, no wonder Jeff bezos, CEO of amazon, is the one of the richest man in the world worth over $192 billion(as at Feb, 2021).

So, you see. it is also a good business to invest too.

Setting up your own ecommerce store is now easier than it has ever been.

There are solutions that you can use where you pay a monthly subscription to set up one for yourself.

A good example is Shopify.

Aside shopify, there are themes and plugins for the WordPress blog platform that you can use such as woocommerce, bigcommerce, memberpress, easy digital downloads etc.

Making your ecommerce store successful depends on how heavy you promote your website, being in the right niche and selling the right products to the right set of people.

On the other side, all business comes with some few challenges in the sense that you must understand how the market operates, the right marketing approach to use, the tools needed, technical now-hows, setbacks, its feasibility etc.

Aside all these, you also have to deal with customer service, returns, sourcing products, stock outs and many more.

Trading On Freelance Websites

This aspect has to do with utilizing your skills, talents and converting it into money.

To start with, there are various freelance marketplaces where you can offer your skills as a service and getting paid thereafter.

For example, here is how it runs; The freelance sites offers various categories of services such as writing, graphic design, video, lifestyle, music, digital marketing, programming etc.

So, If you are good in offering any of them e.g say you are good in designing graphics i.e. logos, flyers, banners etc, you can apply and set up a service there.

And if any client wants you to design a logo for him, you charge him, get the work done and get paid instantly.

As simple as ABC.

Aside using skills, you can also offer services using tools as well.

Examples of such sites are fiverr, Gigbucks, Upwork, freelancer, 99designs, gigster, peopleperhour, guru, seoclerks and many more.

The most favorite of them are fiverr, seoclerks and Upwork because they as shown below;

To begin with, the process is simple but can be very technical especially when setting up an account and driving in potential clients to your offers.

But do not freak. I have put up a very comprehensive tutorial specially for you on fiverr and everything about it here: How To Make Money On Fiverr

If interested in Seoclerks, here is the link: Make Money Online With Seoclerks

I wont deliberate further on this because these 2 tutorials breaks down everything you ought to know about seoclerks and fiverr.

Hence i strongly recommend you go through them for educational and enlightenment purposes to avoid pitfalls.

Lets move on to the next which is …………………………….

Dropshipping

Dropshipping?

Hmmm…..What is it all about?

It is similar to affiliate method.

Picture it this way

– You go into partnership with a manufacturer/supplier.
– You advertise his products by uploading them to your website or through other channels
– A customer place an order for the product, you forward the order to the supplier you partnered with and keep the profit margin to yourself.

The profit margin is where you make money from this dropshipping business.

The profit comes from charging a higher rate than the manufacturer/supplier

The supplier takes over and delivers the product to the customer to finalize the order.

Image below describes graphically how it takes place for easy understanding.

That is all it is mainly about.

There are sites that run dropshipping but the popular ones are shown below; wayfair and spocket

Wayfair grow at a rate of 25% to 35% yearly. infact, it wasn’t a surprise that they hit a $3 million revenue in a single day.

So definitely, wayfair is a good place to invest in dropshipping.

Spocket is another good place where you connect with the US and EU-based suppliers.

With these two, you get access to best products from thousands of suppliers from all over the world.

You can research and try others you come across.

The difference between dropshipping and a conventional ecommerce store is that you do not need to acquire any stock with dropshipping.

The dropshipping companies will take care of that, provide the product range and take care of the delivery to the customer as well.

Sounds perfect right?

Well it can be good but you need to check the commission levels first.

Most dropshipping websites are not too generous with their commissions so you will need to shift a high level of stock to make good income.

Create Your Own Product And Service

Creating the right products and services in your niche that answer the questions that the target market has is a great way to build a 6 figure business online.

It does take time, effort and usually money to create your own products and services.

But the advantage that you have is that you own the customer to yourself.

So, Do you have an idea for a great product or service?

Maybe you have expertise in a specific niche and you know what people in this niche are looking for?

Your product can fix the pain they have.

A good example is an ebook (on affiliate marketing) for sale by Harsh Agrawal of shoutmeloud

Your product can be physical or digital.

What is most important is that there will be demand for it. You do not want to spend time and money developing a product that nobody wants.

There are online businesses that make millions of dollars each year through providing products and services that people need and will gladly pay for.

So just do your research and go for one.

Trading Via AMAZON FBA

Do you know that you can use the power of Amazon to sell physical products?.

This is what is known as FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) service where you can list products on their sites and they will fulfill the customer orders and deal with any customer service issues.

The only thing you do here is to pay a fee per product sold to do this + monthly usuage charge (39.99/month).

Though other popular sites might be running this kind of offer, Amazon stands at a better advantage because it receives a huge amount of traffic every month.

If you can provide products that people want then you can be very successful with the FBA model.

It is down to you to source the products and deliver them to Amazon warehouses for shipping to customers.

A lot of people involved in FBA turn to China for low priced products that they can sell at a higher price in the United States, the United Kingdom, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand and so on.

The Amazon FBA model does require you to make an investment in product acquisition.

Unlike other online business models you will need to spend a few thousand on products before you can start to see a return.

But if your products are popular on Amazon, they will sell fast and it will not be long before
you start to see a return on your investment.

There are a number of pitfalls with Amazon FBA.

If you don’t know what you are doing then you can lose a lot of money.

Amazon has a lot of rules and regulations that you have to comply with for example.

But if you get it right you can easily create a 6 figure online business.

On this chapter, that will be all for now.

But dont get it twisted.

There are lots of other online opportunities that you can leverage on to make money online, hence this tutorial does justice to it here: 23 ways To Make Money From Online Businesses

Feel free to go through it to expand your scope of horizon in online business world.

Setting Up Your Online Freelance Business: TOOLS

Just like the physical businesses, some tools are a MUST-HAVE if you are serious about running an online business.

Since we are talking about the word “Online” here, then the most important tool of them all is a WEBSITE.

No matter which of the online freelance businesses you choose to go for, we always recommend that you setup your own website.

The reasons are that;

1. It boosts your standard, credibility and relevance in your niche world among competitors and clients.
2. You can showcase your products and services to the outside world
3. Owning a website enables you reply to clients’ messages, deliver orders, respond to queries, place discounts,
4. Showcase your brand
5. It offers opportunity to scale your business higher and reach out to more customers.
6. You can provide customer support to your clients
7. Etc.

The main sub-tools needed to set up a website are web-hosting, domain name, logo, email autoresponder, payment processor and wordpress.

Lets briefly check them one-by -one below;

Domain Names

You need a good domain name that represents your online business very well.

The best domain name extension to use is .com, though many names have gone for this extension, you can still use it.

But some good alternatives are a .net, and .org and there are lots of other extensions available today such as .co, .club, .news, .review and so on.

If you are going to market in a specific country then choose a domain extension for that country. for example, In the United Kingdom you can go for a .co.uk or just .uk and in Australia there is .com.au etc.

For marketing your business worldwide you are better off with a .com, .net or a .org. These are generally accepted to be global domains.

Now, when it comes to domain names, You can go for a branding name that corresponds to your products.

For example, If you are opening ecommerce store to sell clothes, it can be clothesforall.com which tells the visitor what to expect.

Note that some names might have been taken. As you can below, amazon has been taken, hence unavailable.

if so, you have to continue searching until you see one that is very much available.

BlueHost is a wonderful place to check if search out for any available domain names present by visiting their website here: BlueHost Domain Platform I personally use bluehost for my website.

Once there, you click “Domains” to start searching.

It is not compulsory to use something that correlates. you can use any name or even your personal name to go with.

Just make sure it makes some sense.

Web Hosting

When you browse various websites in your computer or mobile, they do not just appear by magic.

What is responsible is the Web Hosting platform they are installed on.

And this is one factor that is very critical especially when choosing a webhosting provider.

Infact, when choosing one, there are certain factors you should be know and look out for as stated below;

• Do they offer shared or dedicated webhosting: Initially, newbie websites can go for shared hosting but as time goes on, more traffic and content will begin adding pressure.

hence the need to upgrade to dedicated or VPS hosting for faster website loading.

People do not have any patience and they will become frustrated if your website takes a lot of time to load.

The search engines don’t like this either and you will have difficulty ranking a slow website.

• Customer Support: Do they have video tutorials to show you how to do specific tasks?.
Do they have a good knowledgeable base where you can search for answers to questions?
DO they offer live chat sessions 24/7?
These are what to look out for when choosing a web-host to resolve issues fast and enjoy quick browsing experience.

• One-click WordPress Install: We recommend that your web-host use WordPress to setup your website as it is so easy and you don’t need any technical skills to do this.

• Unlimited Space And Bandwidth: This is very necessary so your website can accommodate more traffic and content without breaking down intermittently as traffic increases.

• Free SSL Certificates: Some offer it free while some charge. Check and go for those that offer free SSL Certs.

• cPanel Access: Make sure they offer free access to your cpanel 24/7 with secure login features.

Finally, there are lots of web-hosting providers out there and searching for the right one might seem difficult.

But what you can do is to google search a list of them and go through one-by-one until you are satisfied with your choice or better still go with the one i use personally which is this: BlueHosting Web-Hosting Platform.

Click on the link to access bluehost, then click “Get Started” to begin processing.

They have all these features I listed above as you can see in the image and with good customer support in that they are always ready to chat with me even at 12 midnight.

How sweet can that be.

Logo

According to wikipedia definition of a logo, A logo is symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition.

So, adding a logo is very necessary to boost your business relevance, confidence and credibility among your clients.

Such logo can be in form of text, symbol, signature, emblem, mascot, abstract or combination of any.

Now, when it comes to design, you can design it to suit your website or any style that you like regardless of whether it is relevant to you or not.

For example, this website: chetaweb has the brand name(green) and internet sign(green+orange) on it as you can see below;

Same with Facebook that has the “F” letter in it.

but when you check out instagram, its logo is just rounded edge square shape(purple+red+orange) which isnt related to instagram in any form.

So you see.

Anyone will do for you but just make sure it come out appealing and nice.

Email Responder

Email marketing is a very powerful way of keeping in touch with your customers and getting them to purchase your products and services later.

TAKE NOTE OF THIS: Not everyone who visits your website is going to make a purchase straight away.

But here is the kicker: If you are able to capture their email address then you can send them email updates about the benefits of purchasing your products to convince them to buy now or later they will buy later on.

You will need an email autoresponder service to capture email addresses and send emails out.

There is also a broadcast facility where you can send emails to your list whenever you want.

There are several companies offering auto responder services, but the two most popular services are from Aweber and GetResponse.

Others include Mailchimp, moonmail, Constant Contact, campaign monitor etc and more.

The one i use for my website is GetResponse Email Autoresponder and it is a very fantastic tool which has helped me boost sales and traffic to my website.

I strongly recommend you go for it.

Payment Processor

You will need a way to collect money for the purchases that your customers make and this applies if you are selling your own products and services or opening an ecommerce store.

Hence, you will need a payment processor who will collect payments for you (for a fee of course) and then allow you to transfer funds into your bank account.

One of the most popular and trusted payment processors is PayPal.

They have millions of customers that use their services and their transaction fees are reasonable.

You can create payment buttons from within your PayPal account to add to your website.

Setback: The only problem with PayPal is that it is not available in all countries and might make unsupported countries not to patronize you.

But worry less for this is an alternative to PayPal which is 2Checkout.com.

They cover most countries in the world and will also let customers pay using a PayPal account or with a credit card as shown below.

Another popular payment processor is Stripe and can be integrated into checkout too as shown above.

So what is the significance of this?

It means that if your clients cannot buy using PayPal, they can use their credit cards to buy.

As simple as that.

Infact, to “fulfil all righteousness”, add the 2 payments methods (paypal and checkout+stripe) together to give all countries equal levels.

Finally, make sure that your payment processor also works for your country too and that you can make easy withdrawals to your back account from revenue generated from sales.

Lets move on to the next chapter.

Setting Goals For Your Online freelance Business

There is a saying that goes;

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
benjamin franklin

Most people start online businesses and fail because they set up no plan or goals in first place.

They just jump into it and before you say “jack robinson”, they are out.

Why?

Because no feasible plan, no target goals, no projections, no initial strategies, nothing at all.

But for a serious-minded person who is keen on making smiling to the bank, there are certain questions you must ask yourself;

– How much am i to invest?,
– what much am i likely to earn within 6 months time?
– how do i recover if there are unforeseen setbacks etc.
– are there any chances of expansion?
– what about my strong competitors?, how do i compete favorably?
– How feasible is this business?

These and more other questions are what you should take seriously.

Answering them will position you along the right path towards achieving your goal.

Best of all, you can follow these SMART goal setting process which starts for;

• Specific – Is earning $50,000 in 12 months specific?
• Measurable – can you measure what you earn each month to see how well you are doing?
• Achievable – Is this business achievable in reaching its goal? Is the goal even achievable in itself?
• Realistic – is it realistic to make over $10,000 a year with an online business?
• Timed – How long must it takes for me to hit my set-target? Will it take donkey years or few months to make $10,000?

Keeping these SMART goals in mind, picturing answers to it will spur you into working harder and smarter, making sacrifices to make sure you reach the goldmine in no distant time.

Even further, you can put pen to paper these goal targets and document your findings and recordings as your business runs to see if you are making progress or not.

Now, going further, aside these SMART goals, you might also ask yourself: why set up this business?.

Don’t just write down that you are doing it for the money.

Money is just something useful – what will you do with the money?

Who are you doing this for?

Is it to please your partner by buying a car for her or to build a house?

OR is it for future financial security?

The purpose of doing any task is where the passion is

Hence, in line with that quote, it will make your business your top priority, push you to put in extra effort, make sacrifices and persevere as you run your business.

It is very important.

Now, as it relates to routine works, the human life is full with all sort of activities to sustain life itself.

Activities such as school studies(if any), office work, household chores, religious activities, family matters and many others and these acts will surely impact in the running of your business.

So, it is a matter of adjusting, re-adjusting and balancing your work routines so it doesn’t impact negatively towards achieving your business goals.

For example, if you always wake up by 6am or 7am everyday to kick-off the day, you might consider waking up by 4am so you can do your house chores and have enough time for your business.

It is all about sacrifice.

Lastly, there maybe instances where you will feel frustrated especially when there are absolutely no signs of positive results within the first few months.

I understand this feeling very well.

It can be so painful and frustrating.

But you what!

If it is a business that others has ventured into and come out successful with proof and you are following their footsteps, then no cause for worry at all.

It is likened to a case of a goldmine digger who digs down the earth until he discovers gold.

So same with all forms of businesses including the online ones.

Hence, at this point, patience is KEY.

Create enough time, have lots of endurance, perseverance and follow the guidelines and goal steps meticulously well.

With time, you will finally make it.

Marketing Your Online Business: Traffic Generation

If you want your new online business to fail then skip this chapter!

This may sound harsh but it is true.

This is one aspect that is super-important in any business even the physical ones.

Why?

Because Traffic is the LIFEBLOOD of any online business.

No Traffic, No Profit, No Online Business

Who are these traffic?

They are potential buyers and clients that you are targeting.

Now, picture this

You open a physical store, display your wares outside and wait endlessly for days but no buyer not even one.

How will you feel?

If such occurs, then the business is as good as dead already.

I mean, how are you going to make sales and profits when the buyers are not there in the first place?

That is exactly what we are going to treat in this chapter which is how you can market your business and drive lots of traffic visitors towards it

Nobody like failure

Hence, we will do all what it takes to explain every method capable of driving lots of traffic to your business

Lets continue.

Without any delay, There are lots of ways of generating real human traffic visitors but we will deal with the most critical ones that will work perfectly for you

Traffic are into 2 major parts

– Free Traffic
– Paid Traffic

As the name implies, free traffic is what you get from using free methods while paid traffic is what you get by making certain payments for it.

Lets check what paid traffic entails

First, generating traffic isn’t something that comes at an instant.

It is a gradual process that takes time running into months and even years, depending on the efforts you put.

Meaning that you will have to wait and wait before you start noticing streaks of traffic activity on your website.

But if you cant wait, then there is a way out which is Paid traffic methods

But it comes with a price.

And one big advantage of paid traffic is that it is highly targeted meaning it is capable of reaching the right audience at the right time.

Examples of popular paid methods are as follows;

1. Google Ad-words
2. Display Ads (“Ads” in short)
3. Social media Ads e.g. Facebook, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
4. Sponsored Ads
5. Native ads

Paid Traffic Methods

Google Adwords

This is also known as Cost-per-click (CPC) and it is the biggest source of paid traffic because it deals directly with Google.

Why?

Because Google generates the biggest amount of daily traffic of over 88 billion persons, so it is a good place to invest for traffic.

And it is what you see on google website here indicated by the “Ad” sign as shown below;

From what you can see above, your website appears on top of google search results (for your keywords) above others.

And you know what this means?

Your website gets a large chunk of the whole google first page traffic(about 33%).

What a massive advantage.

Here is the big question

How do we set it up?

The ways out is to visit the google adword link here: Google adwords Access to sign up by clicking “start now” as shown below;

From what you can see above, your website appears on top of google search results (for your keywords) above others.

And you know what this means?

Your website gets a large chunk of the whole google first page traffic(about 33%).

What a massive advantage.

Here is the big question

How do we set it up?

The ways out is to visit the google adword link here: Google adwords Access to sign up by clicking “start now” as shown below;

then, you will be taken to this page below where you can continue with the rest steps.

With Google Ads, you select keywords that your potential customers are likely to search for and then place a bid to get your ad served at the top of the search results page as a sponsored ad.

Lets jump to the next paid ad which is Display Ads

Display Ads

As the name implies, display ads is about displaying your website, products or services in graphical form.

And they come in banner ads, posters, flyers, text ads and you can find them on websites and blogs especially those that commands high traffic.

See examples below;

To get started, you can contact the website administrators to inform them of your intention to display adverts on thier website or visit this advertisers site here: Buysell Ads where you can access a group of them according to niche, traffic, cost, banner size, banner type etc.

You can also check out adclerks Ads too.

But when searching out for websites to pay for display ads, there are certain factors that must be satisfied;

– First, the website must have a good amount of traffic visitors daily e.g the higher the traffic, the better your chances of getting buyers
– second, the website must be related to your niche e.g. it makes no sense advertising an office products on an animal website.
– Third, The display ad must be in positions easily seen by traffic visitors
– Fourth, it can be in form of fixed cost per month or CPC impressions(number of clicks depends on cost)

If you can fulfill these steps in line with your requirements, you are good to go as per display ads.

Social Media Ads

Why social media?

Because they control large amount of traffic as well.

For example, youtube is the second website with the largest traffic users worldwide; over 1.8bn.

That of Facebook traffic and twitter traffic are also huge too.

So, wont it make sense advertise in them?

Here are examples of adverts on facebook and youtube respectively as shown below;

So, you can go for it yourself.

To start with youtube, visit this link here: YouTube Ads and click “start now” to sign up.

For facebook, visit this link here: Facebook Ads manager and click “create an ad” to start off.

Native Ads

Contentmarketinginstitute defines native advertising as,

Native advertising is a paid/third-party advertising format that supports either brand or direct-response goals, and is where the content matches the form, feel, function, and quality of the content of the media on which it appears.

Think of native advertising as a way of distributing your high-quality content so it can get discovered by consumers who might not yet know enough about your business to engage with that content on your owned media channels.

That will be all for paid ads now.

I want to note something about these paid ads.

Paid ads are generally moderate or even expensive depending on the size of traffic and prominence.

For example, if high traffic websites like blackhatworld, CNN, Goal.com, newyorktimes, warriorplus etc charges thousands of dollars for ads placement and these are sites where your chances of getting sales is very high

Hence, this means that you must be well loaded in cash for go into paid ads and the traffic is instant.

This chapter wont be complete if we dont look at the free ways of generating traffic visitors to our online business.

Lets delve into them below;

Free Traffic Methods

Everyone loves free things including myself.

Hence, it wont be a bad idea if you read through these methods i will do justice to.

Search Engine Optimization

Otherwise pronounced as “SEO”, It is the process of optimizing your website to boost its online visibility among search engine results.

When we say “optimization”, we mean carrying out various strategies on your business website to push your site up and up the google rankings until it gets to first page.

Why?

Because that is where you get majority of traffic visitors.

Infact, anything from page 2 downwards hardly get any or no traffic at all.

Google statistics by chitika reports that 91% of google users(traffic) visit 1st page results while just 10% visit 2nd page.

Aside this, even 33% of the firstpage traffic goes to the 1st position, while 24.7% goes to 2nd position, 18.66% for 3rd position and so on

Now, The big question is: how do we achieve this results?

1. By building High quality backlinks on high quality websites linking back to your site. Creating good backlinks manually can be very tedious and stressful but if interested, i have put up a very comprehensive and understandable article on how to build high quality backlinks here: Backlink building strategies That Works

But if you dont have that time or energy, you can outsource it and have others do it for you for a fee. A good place to contact them is fiverr here: Fiverr Freelance Site

To understand fiverr as a buyer and everything about it, this link just justice to it here: How To Operate Fiverr As A Buyer

2. Publishing good quality content that adds value to your readers meaning your content must be garnished with lots of updated content, images and facts backed by data.

Such content can be inform or articles, infographics, videos, audio podcasts and images.

Then you upload to their necessary places where they are most relevant.

For example, uploading videos to YouTube, vimeo and blogs, articles to blog posts, inforgraphics to infographic sites, audio to podcast sites, images to photo sites e.g flickr etc.

This is what is called Content Marketing – i will explain in details soonest.

You can also upload all these to your webpages as well.

3. Implementing user search intent, meaning writing contents that suits exactly what the google users want for example, if a google user types ” backlink checker”, all he wants is a tool to analyse backlinks not a content telling him what backlink checker is all about.

Social Media Marketing

This is the process of creating content (representing your products & services) that suit the context of social media platforms and promoting them on the same platforms for social media traffic and engagement.

Such popular platforms are Facebook, twitter, Instagram, YouTube, linkedln and pinterest.

Now, to create content in these social sites, all you do is to create an account on each of them, create thier corresponding content and upload to them.

For example, for this my site: chetaweb, i have setup accounts on social media pages and upload my content on all of them.

– On facebook, i created a page and upload my content and link on it here: https://www.facebook.com/Chetaweb/
– On twitter, i did the same thing too here; https://twitter.com/ChetawebOnline
– On youtube, i created several videos and upload them to my youtube account here: ChetawebTV Youtube Channel
– On instagram, i created account here: https://www.instagram.com/chetaweb/
– same with pinterest here: https://www.pinterest.com/ChetaWeb/boards/

Go ahead and create same for your business also.

Email Marketing

Have you even come across stuffs like this on your mail inbox?

What the owner is doing is to inform me(market) about his new product “Facebook Live Mastery” to me (and his email list members) with a link to same product on his website.

Imagine sending this to an email list of over a thousand members, the conversion rate are high or moderate depending on the members’ interest, their financial capability, how compelling it is, time of sending, country-based or universal etc.

This is what Email Marketing is all about.

The only drawback is that you need to pay a monthly fee to use an email platform and put in copywriting skills to push the readers to take action.

There are lots of email marketing software out there such as aweber, moonmail, active campaign, getresponse, mailjet etc.

But i recommend you go for getreponse because they have proven to be very effective with great customer support.

Infact whenever i contact them for anything, they are always available 24/7.

You can check them out here: Getresponse Email Platform

Try them out and thank me later

Winks!

So, why invest in email marketing?

First, Email marketing offers you the opportunity to gather targeted traffic by collecting their email address in exchange for an incentive, gift, discount, free trial, guide etc as you can see below;

Secondly, through their email addresses, you can inform your list of any product updates, latest info, announcements, discounts, new offers, news etc.

Thirdly, when you introduce a product to your traffic, not all of them buy immediately for different reasons.
So, through their email, you can remind them of the same product and even introduce discount, bonus, commission or giveaways to entice them to buy.
Or else, you may lose that visitor forever.

Fourth, it enables you build a personal close relationship with your list by sending them useful tips, tutorials, articles, videos etc on intermittent basis.

With these 4 reasons, It is very important that you build an email list for your online business.

Video Marketing

If you do not have videos on YouTube promoting your business then you are missing out on some serious targeted traffic because YouTube is the second biggest website in the world and gets billions of views every day

So its very essential that you setup a YouTube channel, create videos and upload them to your channel just as i have done here: Chetaweb TV YouTube Channel

But setting up a channel isn’t just enough, the real success of video marketing deals on the amount of views, engagements and subscribers you amass over time.

And how can you amass lots of views as well as subscribers?

First, It is by creating high quality videos that are useful, educative, entertaining and of great value to YouTube users.
Millions of them storm YouTube everyday seeking solution, info, tutorials on different niches and if your channel is able to offer what they are searching for, then they will subscribe to your channel.

Secondly, you must always post videos on a regular basis to remain consistent with your subscribers to avoid other competitors snatching them from you.

Aside this two, there are several ways you can grow your views and subscribers from scratch.

This video by Dan Lok explains more on that below.

Lets watch.

Thirdly, Make sure that you do some keyword research and optimize your videos for search so your videos will appear high up in any searches in YouTube for your keywords.

There is a particular too i use for doing my keyword research and it is VIDIQ TOOL.

Such tool has helped me in determining the right keywords to use which has helped me rank my videos to a good extent.

There are several optimization rules for boosting your chances of ranking your YouTube videos and Brain Dean of backlinko wrote a fully comprehensive, well-detailed article on it here: How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos For Higher Rankings

Creating “How To” videos will also do a whole lot good for you as 80% of users come to YouTube are searching for solutions to problems, issues, worries etc.

Content Marketing

The principle here is that you create useful content that provides value to those who consume it and thus wanting to visit your website or channel for more and more great content.

Content can be in form of text, videos, podcasts (audio files) and images.

On blogposts, it is recommended you write words of upto minimum 2000+ because it is one of such factors that google looks out for when ranking webpages.

And ensure you post consistently on an intermittent basis.

But writing good quality content can be very brain-consuming and takes lots of time. Honestly, initially when i started, i went through alot myself but there is a way out.

You can outsource it to freelance writers to writing articles for you here: Fiverr or you can get access to Free Private rights articles on various topic here: PLR Database

Simply edit the PLR Articles to make them Unique and upload to your website.

On the part of video content marketing, i have explained at about it above in the video marketing sub-chapter (which i guess you have read already).

Just make sure you post videos of high useful and value to readers and it must be lengthy enough, say about 8 mins long

On the part of images, they can be in form of screenshots, infographics, vintage, freestock etc. They are used to analyse and enhance understanding of a topic in graphic form.

And you know why images generally work?

Because naturally, the brain grabs messages in image form faster than words and sticks very well.

Adding Infographics is the best of it for they are graphical representation of data, topic, content etc used to converge information clearly and quickly.

See how it looks like below;

To get good infographics designers, they are on fiverr as well. Pikochart is another wonderful place to get great infographics too by yourself but it comes with plan packages.

You can read more about it here: https://venngage.com/blog/how-to-make-an-infographic-in-5-steps/

In conclusion to this sub-topic, there is what we call content syndication.

Content syndication is a process in which third-party sites republish content that originally appeared on your website.

You can publish your content on such sites with a backlink linking back to your own website.

These syndication sites are of high domain authority and possess huge amount of traffic on a daily basis, so it will be cool if you can post your content there and get a little chunk of the traffic from there back to your website.

A good number of them are

– Medium, Quora, Reddit for posting articles
– Slideshare, pinterest, Mix for posting images and infographics
– Youtube, vimeo for uploading videos
– Soundcloud for uploading Audios

These are the most popular ones that are of very strong domain and has lots of traffic visitors streaming in daily.

So, we suggest you take advantage of them to the maximum.

Finally, to achieve a maximum full results all through as per real human traffic, you can combine the two traffic methods together (free and paid Traffic) in marketing your online business.

That is not to say either method cannot stand on its own, they can. It all depends on your investment financially meaning if you are high on budget, you can go for the two.

But if you are low or moderate on budget, you can go for either one.

Before i close this sub-topic, i want you to know something.

Big difference between free and paid traffic is that the former takes time to come while the latter is instant.

If you have the patience and time to wait for some months, then you can execute the free traffic methods but if you need traffic at a go, the paid method is yours for the taking.

Scaling Up Your Online Business

Once you have got your online business to a certain level, there might be need to upgrade your business in certain areas to drive more traffic, make additional money and boost your business potentials especially if you are working on your own.

For instance, if your online business has begin generating small revenue, you can pay others to perform specific tasks for you so you can have enough time and energy to focus on key areas of your business.

The key areas varies and is solely exclusive to the online business owner.

But generally speaking, your focus needs to be on marketing while you can outsource tasks that seems technical to freelance experts for a fee.

Such include the following below;

• Hiring freelance writers to write articles for blogposts
• Hiring a virtual assistant to perform administrative tasks
• Hire manager to schedule your social media posts daily, weekly or monthly
• Hiring SEO experts to carry out monthly SEO campaigns on your website.
• Hiring a graphic designer to handle your graphic needs
• Hiring a video editor to create and edit your videos to suit your niche

You can outsource any or all of these tasks above (depending on your budget) while you supervise them to ensure a good job is done.

Aside that, you can carry out offline marketing like printing flyers, pasting posters, distributing business cards, advertising on billboards, newspapers and magazines and many others.

Finding good outsources isn’t that easy but one good place i will recommend where you can hire them is here: Fiverr Freelancing Market

After clicking the link, you click “Join” to create an account as shown below;

After that, you can search them out using the job categories or by typing what you are looking for in the searchbox as shown below;

They parade good freelancers with years of experience in their various field of expertise.

Sometimes i use some of them too when i have lot at desk to do.

You can try them out yourself if you wish to.

Now, here is the big deal

While you carry out these tasks, there is every need to monitor your website and analyse if you are making progress or not in terms of amount of traffic(which is key) and revenue.

It is very important you do.

If little or no progress at all, then you may consider changing your strategies and trying something new.

But if progress is steady, then get ready to smile to the bank.

Best Practices For Your Online Business

The road to developing a successful online business can be tedious, exhausting and stressful especially if you have a truckload of work steering at you in the face and you don’t know where to start from.

Infact, the thought of it alone can be intimidating.

But worry less, we have come up with 8 best practices that we strongly recommend you follow to create a successful online business.

1. Having The Right MindSet:

Whatever The Mind Can Conceive And Believe, The Mind Can Achieve
Napoleon Hill

One thing that kill a business from start is not having a positive frame of mind that you can succeed in your business and the business is as good as dead even if the owner has an iota of doubt that it will succeed.

Hence, you need to possess the positive vibe in your heart that you can make it.

This is what will motivate and charge you to continue especially when you face obstacles and tough challenges.

Choose the Right Online Business Model

Let me ask you this question?

Have you come across 2 persons who are completely and absolutely alike in character, mindset, appearance, behavior etc?

Never!

Even in millennium years to come, it can never happen

Hence, this is one reason why not all businesses can suit a particular person.

Humans are wired differently, so it is advisable that you do some research of the types of businesses and pick the one that suits you perfectly.

For example, if you are very skilled in the art of graphic design e.g. logo design, that is a good opportunity to venture into logo design business.

Aside the human factor, other factors are involved too.

For example, are the people around you internet-savvy?

Is the area densely-populated?

Are your potential customers from 1st world or 3rd world countries?

Aside passion, these and other questions are what will influence your choice of online business to start from?

So it is up to you to follow your heart and study your environment very well to avoid pit-falls.

Set up your Online Business properly

In this case, i will suggest you have a mentor; someone who has been into your kind of business and doing well.

Establish a good relationship with him so you can ask questions when in doubt to avoid grave mistakes.

And in addition to that, he will guide you through various steps to achieving certain tasks meticulously well.

All you need do is to locate their social media profiles to be their friends. On you tube, subscribe to their channel for tutorial video updates.

Rather than learning the hard way and making mistakes, this will surely act as shortcut to reaching your business goal.

Set Goals for your Online Business

Every human activity in life is goal-oriented.

I mean, if a painter get booked, his goal is to satisfy his customer by painting a good quality work.

So also is a mechanic who goal is to put his clients’ cars back in good condition.

Same goes for the business owner whose goal is to generate traffic and earn revenue. Hence this aspect cannot be over-emphasized at all.

You know why?

Because that is the primary motive for setting up your business in the first place.

And whatever the goal is, make sure you have it in mind at all times too.

So having a goal in mind along with a positive mindset is a great practice towards success.

Promote your Online Business

Traffic = Lifeblood of any online Business.

Therefore, you must do everything you can to get the word out about your online business.

There is nothing much to say in this practice of promotion.

Just as i have already discussed above, there are several free traffic and paid traffic methods that you can use.

– Free methods takes more time to show results.
– But if you want results in the shortest possible time, invest in paid traffic methods, but hey, it comes with a price.

CONCLUSION: How To Start An Online Freelance Business For Beginners

Phew! Phew!!

Finally, we are completely done with this guide.

I know it is long and bit stressing, i understand, but that is why it is a complete guide.

We did our best to ensure we treat almost everything about online business in toto so you, the readers can get great value for your time well spent.

Now, this is a very important warning;

IMPORTANT WARNING: Just like other physical businesses, running an online business is NOT a get-quick-rich scheme.
Definitely, it will take some time before you begin noticing traction on your traffic analysis (though it will be faster with it with paid traffic).

Though you will have to exercise some patience, time, endurance and perseverance but the degree of progress depends on time, effort, financial investment etc you put into it.

If you have any questions, drop it in the comments section below and i will reply as fast as a cheetah.

Finally, The Table Is Yours

Now the ball is in your court: How to Start An Online Freelance Business For Beginners.

What do you intend to do?

Are you planning to start off an online business right now?
Or
What do you think about this guide on online business?
Or

Do you have any input to make about anything?

Free free to drop your comments, recommendations, suggestions, advice etc

I am 100% available to respond to your comments one-by-one

Thanks for your time, patience and understanding.

Bye for now.