Blog: How to start an online business: 5 simple steps

Alumnus of St Mary’s University, Twickenham Joseph Gregorio gives a run down on a 5-step formula he used to build an online business and provides some useful hints and tips on how to slowly turn it into a brand At the time of launching my discount code website and blog, CheckMeowt in April 2015, there was an explosion of people paying more attention to their health. This presented an opportunity to provide a solution to many people’s problems. In my case, it was helping people find affordable health and fitness products by listing supplement discount codes from top brands and retailers in the UK. Which brings me onto my first point: Fill a gap After frequent engagement with online forums, doing keyword research and countless hours trawling the web, it was apparent that a common frustration people faced was not having access to a specialist website that listed top fitness deals, but that also bridged the knowledge gap on these products. This was the gap CheckMeowt was going to fill which I will go into a bit more detail later. Once I decided on my niche, my next objective was to: Design an easy to navigate website I knew this would be a difficult task as I didn’t know the first thing about coding/designing websites. However, after watching a few YouTube tutorials and reading extensively on the area, I was able to discover the free to use platform Wordpress. Wordpress takes away the need for technical skills by providing a variety of existing templates you can use that can be tailored to meet your own brand’s image and objective(s). CheckMeowt homepage with an easy to use interface using visual effects for a better user experience Although Wordpress is free, you still have to pay a small sum to host your website on it. For me, this was a tiny price to pay for the overarching goal in mind for my personal health and fitness brand. I’ve found that hosting providers like GoDaddy and 1&1 are good places to start in this space. Create great content Once I had built my website, the next step was producing great content. Because I was naturally passionate about what I was pursuing and involved in, creating great content has never really been an issue. In my opinion, most people usually fail at this stage simply because they are looking for a ‘get rich quick scheme’ or are not in love with what they do. This then reflects in a lack of interest on what they are writing about or selling. In the end, loving what you do will help you build something of high quality that will eventually make money. By continually plugging away, the things you work on will soon gather pace and gradually piece together. Monetise where possible As intimidating as it may sound, this is made relatively simple through a process called affiliate marketing which involves promoting and selling another brand’s product in return for a commission (once a sale has been completed). In terms of CheckMeowt, this involves providing promotional vouchers and offers such as Myprotein discount codes and Bulk Powders discount codes. Additionally, to fill the knowledge gap users may have regarding a specific product - content-based reviews are regularly posted to help readers make more informed purchase decisions. An example of this is a post on Myprotein protein brownies. Build an audience Having followed the above 4 steps, the last and final step is to build a followership. From personal experience, this is the most challenging yet most rewarding part of having an online business as there is no guarantee of success. You are always in full control of the outcome, no one else. Building a loyal audience does not happen overnight and is a continuous process that has no ending. However, provided you have followed the previous steps effectively, this should be fairly straightforward. Although having a presence on social media and sending targeted e-mails to build traffic are certainly important, ‘search engine marketing’ is ultimately the most sustainable way of driving highly qualified customers long-term. Here are 2 key ways I use to drive organic traffic from search engines: On-site SEO Before writing a new piece of content, I will do keyword research using Google’s keyword planner to write highly targeted posts. Each post will contain this magic keyword which improves relevancy and ranking. Off-site SEO This involves work outside of CheckMeowt and building relationships with others in my niche across the internet through friendly link-building strategies. Every now and then I post on community forums in the health and fitness area to help others who may have specific questions. This helps me establish myself as an expert, building trust and credibility while pointing back to my website. For example, the image below is a question I answered which generated more than 35,000+ views in a matter of days. A question I answered on the forum Quora which amassed a huge readership In fact, the answer was so popular it was featured on Myprotein’s blog, who are the largest sports nutrition company in Europe. It was then circulated across the internet which resulted in tremendous traffic back to CheckMeowt. This is what builds a brand! Featured blog post on Myprotein UK which was driven from my answer on Quora So there you have it, 5 ways you can develop an online business from scratch and begin to build brand equity. Remember, there are no guarantees in the online world, and without hard work or effort, you will not see noticeable results. By following the above steps, not only will you get off to a great start, but one day you may find yourself naturally move above the fold and establish yourself as the go-to person in your niche.