Most internet marketers fail online because they don’t know where their business is going or how they are going to get there (whatever their end goal is, usually making money online). Many novice internet marketers may experience some success at first, but will eventually fail. They will fail because they don’t have and use a solid business plan in developing their online business. Most people who are just starting out in internet marketing treat this business as a “hobby”. It is something they do in their spare time.

Most of these online entrepreneurs run after the hype and eventually shut down their online business. This is almost always due to a lack of sales. They thought it would be “easy” to get sales online. The ideas behind these websites were great, but the people who came up with the idea didn’t see the potential of the business venture.

To build a strong online business, you need to think like a business owner. You are only going to turn your creativity into money by using the resources that are available to you. Whenever you face a challenge in your online business, you need to spend time planning and analyzing a strategy to overcome the challenge and be successful. 90% of people who are investing in business ventures don’t do this, and that leads to failure!

One way I’ve found that will help you plan your website content is by using what’s called a “10×10 matrix.”

10×10 matrix

Open a new Excel file and brainstorm 10 things you’re passionate about. Write these 10 things in the first row, across the top. These things would be things that you would do for free and enjoy doing. His day job may be office manager, but he loves vintage cars. Over the years, he has learned a lot about vintage cars through magazines, videos, and real-life experiences. People come to you and ask for advice on the subject of vintage cars. You really know a lot about vintage cars and could talk nonstop for hours if you had the chance. You can know how to buy vintage cars, and you can advise others on which vintage cars to choose that suit their style.

Or you may be an avid golfer. If that’s the case, you should write down 10 things you can teach others about how to improve their golf game in the “golf” cell.

These things should be short like “warm up”; “driving range” (start with the wedge and work your way back to the driver, with 10 shots each); there is the “sand bunker practice”; there is “chop”, there is “put”; there is keeping cool in hot environments, etc.

Write 10 things UNDER each main topic you wrote in the cells of the first row at the top. Some categories may not have 10 things you can think of and others may have more than 10.

Now that you’ve brainstormed many potential topics, you need to see if these topics are being used in search engines on the Internet. You don’t want to create content that no one reads about!

You can use Google Keyword Planner to see the list of related keywords in your niche. You can also see how much advertisers pay for a particular keyword.

If you are creating a blog with the articles related to the keywords, you can use Ad-sense ads on your articles. This will allow you the ability to earn money from each blog post! You’ll need to create a website to do that (and that requires a small financial investment, too).

Use each subcategory to write an article and post that article on your blog site. Combine all the subcategories you’ve turned into articles into an ebook that you can offer for sale or use as a giveaway to build your email list. The possibilities are endless!

If you’re not good at writing articles, but you like to create videos, use video blogs! You can create a YouTube channel and upload your videos to this channel. You can directly monetize your videos on YouTube. Once you have enough subscribers, you can ask for donations or provide premium content for a fee on your channel.

If you like to write articles, you can create an ebook with premium content and sell it on your website. I would recommend that you use a Click-Bank merchant account. Click-Bank is an online retail outlet showcasing over 10,000 digital products from vendors around the world. Over 100,000 active affiliates promote sellers’ products for commission.

You may be able to receive a lot of sales in a short period of time. To do this, you need to encourage your affiliates to promote your product by providing them with various promotional materials that they can use that are related to your product.

Remember to make your business scalable because you will get many customers who will be willing to buy more products from you in the future. So you’ll be building your list while making money! The best of both worlds!

You can even create joint ventures with some of the other marketers and make even more money selling their products in the future. Joint ventures take many forms such as giveaway events or simply emailing a promotion from your JV partner to your list and they send your list about your product.

You should always create a business plan based on facts and figures. You need to continually track and modify your campaigns to stay ahead of the game in this fluid and competitive business. Don’t treat this as a hobby or you’ll just have a hobby. You can only have a business if you treat it “like a business.”