GUIDE ONLINE

THE
DEFINITIVE
GUIDE
TO
STARTING
AN
ONLINE
BUSINESS
SPECIAL ISSUE

This guide was created
by Marcus Taylor of
ventureharbour.com
Marcus Taylor is the founder and CEO of Venture
Harbour.
He is a multi award-winning young entrepreneur
and international speaker. In 2013, Marcus won the
award for ‘Young Professional of the Year’ at the
UK Search Awards, held at the Emirates Stadium in
London. A few months later he was also awarded
‘Young Visionary of the Year’ at MIDEM in Cannes.
Prior to launching Venture Harbour, Marcus built
the World’s first scientifically valid ‘comfort zone
calculator’, which he has spoken about at Oxford
University, TEDxMelbourne, and Awesomeness Fest.
SPECIAL ISSUE

Over $3 trillion
change hands
every single day.
IT’S ESTIMATED THAT
OVER $650 MILLION OF
THIS IS EXCHANGED
DAILY BETWEEN ONLINE
BUSINESSES AND THE
2.9 BILLION INTERNET-
ENABLED PEOPLE ON
OUR PLANET.
Over the next decade,
another three billion people
are expected to gain access
to an Internet connection, and
begin contributing to this online
economy.
As the world population
spends more of their hard-earned
income online, the opportunity
for entrepreneurs to build wealth
from starting an online business
is abundant.
Over the past six years I’ve
started nine online businesses.
Not all of them have worked
out how I hoped, but with every
business I either succeeded or
learned a valuable lesson.
I created this guide to help my
friends, family, and any budding
entrepreneurs out there start
their first online business in an
affordable and safe way, while
avoiding many of the common
pitfalls.
This article is extremely long
and in-depth, so I don’t expect
you to read all of it. Feel free to
skip to the section that’s most
relevant to where you’re at
using the links below. If you’re
completely new to starting an
online business, I’d recommend
bookmarking it and working
through it in stages.

What’s in
this guide?
Press on any of the titles to jump straight
to the topic you want to view.
Chapter
1
2
3
What online business should you create?
What constitutes a good niche?
Analysing your competitors & the opportunity in a niche
How stiff is your competition?
How will you make money from your online business?
How much money can you make in your niche?
How to setup your online business
for under $4/month
Deciding on a name for your online business
Registering a free domain name, web hosting, and installing
WordPress
Designing your website & logo
Registering social media profiles
Creating an online store & merchant account
Joining your first advertising / affiliate network
Setting up Google Analytics
How to make your first sale
The three systems to build a successful online business
My first (and accidentally) successful online business
The #1 skill every entrepreneur should learn
Feedback is more important than making the sale
Building your audience
Summary & Comments

Why do you
want to start
AN ONLINE
BUSINESS?
T. harv eker is known for saying that our results
are like the fruits that grow on a tree, in that
the quality of our ‘fruits’ are determined by the
quality of our ‘roots’. In literal terms, the quality
of our thoughts determine the quality of our
actions. The quality of our actions determine
the quality of our results.
I believe that the first step in building
a successful business is to understand
our ‘roots’. Why do you want to build
an online business? What’s motivating
you? Without a fire in your belly, you
won’t have the required drive to build a
successful business.
So why do you want to build an online
business? In my experience, the following
reasons are common.
To earn
some extra
passive
income on
the side of a
main job.
To be able
to afford to
quit a job
you dislike.
To work on
a project
that you’re
passionate
about.
To become
financially
free.

What’s stopping you?
For me, I began building
websites in high school to
earn extra pocket money. I
was playing in a band at the
time, and was saving up to
pay for studio time and to
promote our music.
Starting
an online
business is
expensive
Now that we’ve identified what’s driving
you, let’s figure out what’s holding you back.
When I talk to new online entrepreneurs I
often hear a lot of BS excuses. Before we get
started, I want to totally debunk them.
Totally false. I hired a developer to build
WhatIsMyComfortZone.com for $80. It went
viral and led to a TEDx talk. In this post, I’ll
talk through how you can set up an online
business for under $4/month.
Years ago, starting a business was
expensive. To connect with customers you
needed a physical location, which could
easily cost over $1,000 per month.
Today, the risk of building a business
is greatly reduced. Anyone can start a
business online for under $4, and serve the
2.9 billion people around the World who
have an Internet connection.

7/48 The Definitive Guide to Starting an Online Business
Building
an online
business takes
a long time
Wrong. In fact, by the end of
this blog post you’ll have an
online business. Building your
customers and traffic does take
time, but it’s part of the journey.
If you don’t think you have
enough time to build an online
business, then you’re right –
you probably don’t. But in my
experience even the busiest
people make time for the things
they truly want.
We can all make an extra
hour in the day, even if it
requires waking up earlier, or
watching less Game of Thrones.
One extra hour per day is 365
extra hours per year, which is
the equivalent of 9 weeks of
full time work. What can you
achieve in 9 weeks?

But isn’t it really
hard to make an
online business
successful?
It depends. It mostly depends on how
well informed you are, on the niche
you choose, and how you approach it.
I’ve seen people who are near-clueless
about online marketing make $1,000s
just months after setting up a blog or
YouTube channel. They were the lucky
ones. I’ve also seen people after three
years of perseverance still struggling to
make a profit.
The difficulty with building an online business
comes down to how well informed you are and your
‘roots’. With the right knowledge, it’s quite easy.
I’ve tried my best to ensure that this guide will set
you on the right path to making sales quickly and
affordably.

9/48 Chapter 1
chapter
WHAT ONLINE BUSINESS SHOULD YOU CREATE?
WHAT ONLINE
BUSINESS
SHOULD YOU
CREATE?
The biggest mistake
that first-time online
entrepreneurs make is
choosing a good idea in a
crap niche, or a crap idea in
a good niche. I am just as
guilty as anyone for this.
My first online business was The Musician’s
Guide. It started as a hobby of mine, as I
was enormously passionate about music
marketing. While it did okay in terms of
revenue, music marketing just isn’t a very
lucrative niche. Good idea, bad niche.
Similarly, I see far too many ambitious
people venture out to build a business out of
travel or recipe blogging.
Those niches are so saturated that it’s
virtually impossible to make a significant
amount of money from them today.

SPECIAL ISSUE
So, what sort
of online
business
should you
create?
IN MY EXPERIENCE, A
GOOD NICHE TICKS
ALL OF THESE BOXES:
You must care
about it.
You must be able to become
the authority on it.
You must be able to
differentiate yourself.
You must fulfill
a need.
Your niche must be
commercial.

Let’s go
through each
of these in
detail, as this
is incredibly
important to
get right.
You must care
about your niche
Would you be willing to
write about your niche
every day for six months
without being paid a
penny? If you can answer
‘yes’, then you can tick
this box and move on.
Now, I’m not saying that
you won’t receive a penny
for six months. I am, however,
saying that growing your online
business takes time. There will
be times where you work your
butt off with very little to show
for it.
That’s why you need to care
about your niche. When
you care, you will have the
willpower to get you through
the tough times. Passion can
also be smelt from a mile away.
If you don’t care, your readers
or customers won’t care either.

You must be able to
become the authority
in your niche
What can you be the
best in the World at?
If that seems like a scary question to answer,
zoom in. While it may be unrealistic right now
to be the most authoritative blogger on raw
food, you probably could become the authority
on raw food desserts.
There are many reasons why this is
important. They all boil down to the fact that
online business is a winner takes majority game.
The majority of traffic and revenue in any niche
will be going to the market leader. All of their
competitors will then be fighting over the
minority.
The minority is a tough place to be. In my
opinion, you’re better off owning the majority
of a smaller niche than the minority of a
massive niche.
Choose a niche that you are credible and able
to be the authority in.

You must
be able to
differentiate
yourself
A few weeks ago I
was helping a friend
start her first blog.
She’s a pharmacist
with a passion for
understanding how
different foods and
skincare products
affect the body at a
biological level.
Now, there are a ton of
health food and skincare
bloggers and online
businesses out there. What
makes her different?
Few skincare bloggers
can look at the list of
ingredients on the back of
a shampoo and understand
how each chemical or
ingredient interacts with
the body. As a trained
pharmacist she not only has
credibility and authority,
but she also has her
differentiator.
When everyone zigs, zag.
When everyone zags, zig.

You must
fulfil a need
Do people in your desired
niche have a problem?
Can you solve it for them?
Does solving it involve a
commercial transaction
taking place?
If you can’t confidently say yes to all three,
adjust your niche idea.
Let’s take this website as an example.
Do people have a problem? Yes – according
to Google’s Keyword Planner (we’ll discuss
this later), there are hundreds of thousands of
people searching for information on how to
build and market online businesses.
Can we solve it for them? Yes –
we regularly write about things
like the best web hosting to use,
or how to recover from a Google
penalty. Our blogging is based
on case studies and practical
experience that we’ve had with
our own clients and online
businesses. In other words, we’re
helping people solve problems
that we’ve already had to solve
ourselves.
Does solving these problems
involve a commercial transaction
taking place? Sometimes, yes.
While most of our posts are
written just to establish Venture
Harbour as a trustworthy
source of information on digital
marketing, we occasionally receive
a small commission when we refer
readers to paid services such
as those in this post on email
marketing software.

Your niche must
be commercial
A few months ago I setup a
luxury homeware and travel
blog called Qosy. On the
second day of running the site
(I’m not kidding) we received
an offer to stay at a $2k/night
retreat in Tasmania for a small
fraction of the price if we
agreed to write a review.
We turned it down due to feasibility
and the fact that ‘a small fraction’ was
still way above what I’d be willing to pay
for a hotel, but this taught me a valuable
lesson.
Choose a niche that helps people save
or make a lot of money.
One of my recent clients worked in the
stock market niche. He would earn up to
a $500 commission for every customer
that he referred to a broker. There are
10,000s of people searching for how to
choose a broker in his niche. Because
there is so much money changing hands
in his niche, it’s relatively easy for him to
make a lot of money.
Note: Where there’s a lot of money,
there’s often a lot of competition. This is
why you also need to be differentiated,
passionate, and the authority.
This is in stark contrast to my
experience building online businesses
in the music industry. In music, most of
the money is owned by the major labels,
instrument manufacturers, and newly
funded startups. Unless they’re your
customers, generating income can be a
challenge.

Analysing your
competitors
& opportunity
ONCE YOU’VE
GOT A NICHE
IDEA, IT’S TIME
TO EVALUATE
THE LEVEL OF
COMPETITION
THAT YOU’RE UP
AGAINST.
Before I show you how to do
this, I want you to know that
having competitors is a good
thing. They will motivate you
to kick ass. Having competitors
also helps to confirm that your
niche is viable – as you can see
whether what they’re doing is
working or not.
How many people are trying to solve their problem
online?
Let’s imagine that your idea is to build a blog that
helps people learn about landscape gardening.
You want to inspire people to create beautiful
gardens, and give them insider tips on how to do
it. You plan to monetise it through advertising, and
recommending gardening tools that you receive an
affiliate commission from.

SO, DO PEOPLE SEARCH
FOR THIS KIND OF THING
ONLINE? TO WORK THIS
OUT, WE’RE GOING TO
USE GOOGLE’S KEYWORD
PLANNER.
First off, I’m going to enter a few
keywords that people might search for
in Google to end up on my blog. I’ve
entered these into ‘Get search volume
for a list of keywords’, as I’m interested
in knowing how many times people
search for things like ‘best garden
spades’ each month.

In the screenshot, we can see that around 14,800
people search for gardening tools every month.
There are also 1,900 searches per month for ‘best
lawn mowers’.
This confirms that there are a good number of
people trying to make buying decisions online
around gardening equipment. The next step is to
see how stiff our competition is.
Note: You can ignore the columns about
competition at this stage. This is to do with the
number of advertisers bidding on this keyword
in Google Adwords. We’re just interested in
knowing whether people are searching for
answers to the problems that we plan to solve.

How stiff
is your
competition?
AS MENTIONED, HAVING
COMPETITION CAN BE A
GOOD THING. BUT TOO
MUCH COMPETITION,
OR TOO STRONG A
COMPETITOR, AND YOU
MIGHT BE BETTER OFF
ZOOMING IN WITHIN
YOUR NICHE.
So, let’s go to Google and see what
comes up when we search for ‘best
lawn mowers’. This will give us an idea
as to who we’re up against.
We can see that most of the
websites ranking for this term are
either forum discussions or small
niche websites. In other words,
we’re not up against Walmart, B&Q,
or Homebase, who might be quite
difficult to compete with.

We can also search for
‘landscapegardening blog’ to
see who else comes up:
Having clicked through some of the results I
don’t get the impression that anyone owns this
niche. There doesn’t seem to be any market leader,
just a collection of gardeners blogging about their
gardening.
While there are many great competitive
intelligence tools out there, I don’t want to
overwhelm you with data. At this stage we
just want to know who the players in our
chosen niche are, and whether we think
we can beat them.
If you’re happy with what you’ve
seen, then we can proceed to
consider how we’re going to
monetise this business.

How will you make
money from your
online business?
SO, HOW CAN YOU MAKE
MONEY FROM [INSERT
YOUR NICHE IDEA]?
There are an unlimited number of
ways that you can monetise an
online business. so get creative.
However, I’ll run through four of
the most popular ways to get
some ideas flowing.
Affiliate marketing – This is where you
recommend / link to products with a unique
link. If someone buys a product after clicking
on your link, you receive a commission of
the sale. Virtually every major website has an
affiliate program that you can join for free.
Advertising – There are a few ways you can
monetise your website with ads. You could
contact companies privately and agree on
a monthly fee to place adverts on your site.
Alternatively, you could use a service like
Google Adsense, which pays you every time
someone clicks on your advert.
Selling your own products – This is often
the most lucrative way of making money
online, as you keep 100% of the profits from
the products that you sell. Creating products
can be time consuming, but
it’s usually worth the effort. Many bloggers
choose to create online courses and eBooks,
but you can get as creative as you like with
what products you create.
Drop shipping – This is in between affiliate
marketing and selling your own products. In
essence, customers buy products on your
website, and then you pass on those orders
to a supplier who fulfills and delivers them.
Often the commissions for drop shipping are
higher than affiliate marketing (typically 20 –
35% of the sale).
The right method of monetising your online
business will depend on your niche and the
type of business you create. The best way to
work out what’s best for you is to just try a
few different approaches.

How much
money can you
make in your
niche?
TRYING TO PROJECT
REVENUE IS A BIT LIKE
PREDICTING THE FUTURE.
PROJECTIONS ARE EDUCATED
GUESSES AT THE BEST OF
TIMES. THAT SAID, I DO THINK
IT’S USEFUL TO GET AN IDEA
OF THE BALL PARK FIGURES
THAT YOU’RE DEALING WITH
FOR TWO REASONS.
First of all, motivation. If you
can see that ranking #1 in Google
for a certain phrase will generate
enough revenue for you to buy
something you’ve always wanted,
you’ll work harder to make it
happen.
Secondly, to validate that the
opportunity is worth your effort.
So, how can you work out how
much money you might make in
your niche?
Well, it really depends on how
you decide to monetise your
website. Let’s walk through a
quick example of how we might
monetise a blog post on lawn
mowers with affiliate marketing.
Let’s say that we create a
blog post on ‘Top 10 Best Lawn
Mowers’. How much might we
earn from that blog post if it
ranks #1 in Google for ‘Best Lawn
Mowers’?
The #1 result in Google tends to
get around 56% of all traffic for
that keyword. So, ranking #1 for
‘best lawn mowers’ would likely
generate around 1,064 clicks per
month (1,900 * 0.56).

Let’s say that the average lawn
mower costs $400, and 1% of your
readers buy one through your affiliate
link based on your recommendation.
Let’s also say that your affiliate
commission is 5%, so you receive $20
for every lawn mower you refer.
YOUR INCOME FOR RANKING #1 FOR
BEST LAWN MOWERS, BASED ON THESE
NUMBERS, WOULD BE $212.80 PER MONTH.
Now, this is an extremely
conservative estimate. If
you ranked #1 for ‘best lawn
mowers’ you’d likely also
rank for phrases like ‘lawn
mower reviews’ and ‘top
garden lawn mowers’, which
would also drive converting
traffic. You might also find
that 2.5% of your readers
purchase a lawn mower, and
that occasionally someone
spends $1,000 on a lawn
mower.
This is why projections
are a bit arbitrary. That said,
they’re good for making
relative comparisons
between different keywords
and niche ideas.
So, hopefully by now
you know what niche you
want to dominate, and how
you’re going to turn it into
a business. The next step,
then, is getting started.
In this next section I’m
going to walk through
everything you need to
do to setup your online
business without wasting
your money.

chapter
HOW TO SET
UP YOUR
FIRST ONLINE
BUSINESS
A journey of 1,000 miles
begins with a single step.
– Lao Tzu
This section is all about setting up your
website, and making it look and function like a
professional online business. As this is often the
stage that most people get stuck on, I’m going
to go through each step in great detail.
We’re going to go over each of the steps
below. Feel free to skip ahead if you’ve already
done some of them:
My challenge to you, if you
haven’t already, is to take the
first step towards running your
own online business today.
Deciding on a decent
name for your online
business
Registering your
domain name, web
hosting, and installing
WordPress
Designing your
website & logo
Registering social
media profiles
Creating an online
store
Setting up advertising,
affiliate, and merchant
accounts
Setting up Google
Analytics

Deciding on a
decent name
for your online
business
I WON’T DWELL ON
THIS POINT, AS YOU
SHOULDN’T OVER THINK
IT. I HAVE FRIENDS
WHO SPENT MONTHS
DELAYING BUILDING
A BUSINESS BECAUSE
“THEY COULDN’T
DECIDE ON A NAME FOR
IT”. I CALL BULLSHIT.
When deciding on a name
for your business, I’d have three
recommendations:
It should either be
self-explanatory (e.g.
AfricanSafariReviews.com) or, if you’re in a
fast changing niche, something ambiguous
(like Venture Harbour). I chose the name
Venture Harbour for two reasons, first of all
we build and ‘harbour’ a portfolio of online
ventures. Secondly, companies with words
like SEO, content marketing, or social media
in their name seem to change their names
like the wind due to the fast changing
nature of the industry. I wanted to avoid
that.
Don’t violate
trademarks. A few years
ago I setup an online business which
accidentally violated a competitor’s
trademark. While our name was unique,
it contained their (generic) name within
it. Unfortunately, we had to rebrand.
Luckily, this happened within 30 days of
launching the business so we didn’t lose
too much progress, but I hate to imagine
what we would have had to do if the
dispute was raised several years down the
line.
Make it memorable
and brandable.

Registering your
domain, web
hosting, and
WordPress
IN ORDER TO GET
YOUR WEBSITE UP AND
RUNNING, YOU NEED
THREE THINGS:
A domain name
– This is the address that
people will type into their
browser to access your
website. For example, www.
ventureharbour.com is our
domain name.
Web hosting
– This is the ‘web space’
where you upload your
website’s files to. When
someone types in your
domain name it serves up
web pages from your web
host. Think of it like a hard
disk drive on the Internet.
A content
management
system (CMS)
– Instead of having to
code every page on your
website in HTML, a CMS
enables you to add pages
and make design changes
without having to write any
code. WordPress is a free
CMS, and also happens to
be one of the best.

YOU CAN GET ALL THREE OF THESE
UP AND RUNNING IN A MATTER OF
MINUTES USING A WEB HOSTING
COMPANY CALLED BLUEHOST.
Choosing a good web hosting company
is extremely important. It determines
the security, speed, uptime, and overall
performance of your website. Fortunately,
we’ve done much of the hard work for you.
Bluehost are my favourite affordable web
hosting company. We use them for virtually
all of our websites, and have never had any
downtime or problems.
They offer new customers a free domain
name, as well as the ability to install
WordPress (we’ll talk about this later) in one
click. In other words, you can have everything
you need to set your online business up in
under 5 minutes for less than $5 per month.
So, how do you get started?
First of all, you need to go to the Bluehost website,
click get started now and create your account. You’ll be
able to claim your free domain name on the following
pages.

On the ‘create your account’ page you’ll need to decide
which hosting package you want. For most people,
the most affordable option is absolutely fine. The more
expensive services are designed for websites that already
receive a large amount of traffic. You can always upgrade
later when your website starts to generate a lot of visitors.

You can also untick all of the bells
and whistles. Once you’ve created your
account and have registered your free
domain name you should be able to log in
to your control panel shown below. From
here, you want to look for the button that
says ‘Install WordPress’, which I’ve circled
in red.

From here it should be nice and intuitive.
Just follow the instructions until you reach this
page where you can click install.
After the installation has completed, you
can then visit www.yourwebsite.com/wpadmin/
(just add /wp-admin/) to the end of
your domain name. Usually this works instantly,
but sometimes it can take a few hours for
everything to propagate.
You’ll then need to login to your website
using the credentials that you created in
the installation process, and that’s it! You’ve
officially installed WordPress, which means that
you have yourself a working website!

Designing
your
website
& logo
NOW THAT YOU’VE GOT
WORDPRESS INSTALLED,
YOU SHOULD HAVE
A PRETTY GENERIC
LOOKING SITE LIKE THIS:
To change the design of your
website you will need to choose a
new theme. There are thousands
of beautiful themes, some free and
some paid.
It’s absolutely fine to use a free
WordPress theme, but they tend
not be coded as well as premium
themes. I usually find that it’s worth
paying $40-50 for a good mobile
responsive WordPress theme, but it’s
really up to you.
There’s a great list of themes to
choose from here. You can also
browse ThemeForest, which has
a huge range of great themes to
choose from.

Once you’ve chosen a theme you like and have
downloaded it, go back to your WordPress dashboard
and find the tab called appearance. Under this tab you’ll
see themes, which will bring you to a page like this:
Click add new and upload the theme that you
downloaded. Once this has finished, you just need
to click activate. Depending on your theme, you’ll
then probably need to go to ‘theme options’ and
begin customising your theme with your desired
colours and styles etc.

33/48 Chapter 2
HOW TO SET UP YOUR FIRST ONLINE BUSINESS
Designing your
business’ logo
AS A DESIGNER MYSELF,
I’VE ALWAYS JUST
WHIPPED UP LOGOS IN
PHOTOSHOP MYSELF.
HOWEVER, THERE ARE A
FEW GOOD OPTIONS FOR
NON-DESIGNERS:
99Designs – For about $300 you
get 30 different designers to all create a
logo idea for you. You then choose your
favourite design, and the winner receives
the majority of the $300 as a prize.
PeoplePerHour.com – A
marketplace where many designers offer
‘gigs’ to design a logo for your business.
Prices range from $10 to $250.
Freelance.com - Freelance is
very similar to PeoplePerHour, but slightly
more professional. The difference here is
that you can post a job saying that you
need a logo, and then designers can pitch
you with their portfolio and provide you
with a quote on how much it will cost.
Fiverr – If you just need something
quick and simple you can use Fiverr.com.
This is essentially a super cheap version of
PeoplePerHour, where you can get a logo
designed for $5. It goes without saying
that at this price you’re not likely to get
anything bespoke.

Registering
social media
profiles
IF YOU HAVEN’T
ALREADY, NOW
WOULD BE A GOOD
TIME TO REGISTER
YOUR PROFILES ON
POPULAR SOCIAL
MEDIA PLATFORMS.
AT THIS STAGE, I’D
JUST RECOMMEND
REGISTERING THE
FOLLOWING ACCOUNTS:
A Facebook Page
A Twitter Account
A LinkedIn Company Page
A Google+ Company Profile
A Company Youtube Profile
A Pinterest Profile
If you like, you can upload
your company description, logo,
and begin adding content, but
I’d save this for later. At this
stage, we just want to claim
ownership of the accounts.

Creating an
online store
IF YOU PLAN TO MONETISE
YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WITH
ADVERTISING, AFFILIATE
MARKETING, OR SOME OTHER
METHOD THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE
DIRECTLY SELLING PRODUCTS,
FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS SECTION.
If, however, you’re planning on
selling your own products or drop
shipping, you’ll need to setup a
merchant account with PayPal
and add the functionality to sell
products on your WordPress
website.
To add this functionality, we’re
going to need to install a plugin
called WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is completely free
and easy to set up. To install it, go
to your WordPress dashboard, and
under plugins click ‘add new’.
Search for WooCommerce
and click install.
Once installed, you
need to activate
WooCommerce.
Then, you can begin adding product
pages by clicking on the sidebar
tab called products. The layout is
fairly intuitive, so I won’t go into too
much detail about how to setup
products.
If you do get stuck, there’s a great
guide on setting up WooCommerce
here.

Setting up your
Paypal Merchant
account
REGARDLESS OF HOW
YOU MONETISE YOUR
ONLINE BUSINESS, YOU
WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY
NEED A PAYPAL ACCOUNT
TO GET PAID.
To set this up, go to PayPal.com and follow the
instructions to setup a business account. PayPal’s offerings
vary from country to country, but in most countries they
offer a free account where they receive a small percentage
of every inbound transaction. If possible, that is probably
the best one to go for.

Joining
your first
advertising/
affiliate
network
THE BEST ADVERTISING OR
AFFILIATE NETWORK TO
JOIN WILL DEPEND ON YOUR
NICHE AND THE TYPE OF
ONLINE BUSINESS YOU RUN.
I’LL RUN THROUGH A FEW
OF THE MOST POPULAR AD
NETWORKS AND AFFILIATE
PROGRAMS, BUT I’D
RECOMMEND DOING A BIT OF
RESEARCH ON THIS.
Google Adsense (ad network) –
This is probably the easiest ad network to get setup on,
and it pays relatively well. You just create an account,
decide on the size of advert you want, and then paste
the code into your website’s theme. How much you earn
from Adsense depends, but typically you can expect
$0.50 every time your ad is clicked.
You can view what Adsense looks like here on
WhatIsMyComfortZone.com. Those ads currently
generate $0.38 per click and are clicked by 1.5% of
visitors.

Amazon Associates
(affiliate network) – A few
years ago I wrote a blog post on the
best earplugs for musicians to use. I was
already linking to some products from
Amazon, so I decided to set these to
affiliate links using Amazon’s associates
program. I thought nothing of it for a
year or so.
Then I started to receive monthly payments
of $40, then $80, then $200! What was really
odd was that when I logged into my Amazon
account I realised I was earning commissions
from people buying everything from cat litter
trays to bulk quantities of Haribo turtle sweets.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never written about cat
litter trays or turtle sweets. So, what was going
on?
As it happens, Amazon pay you up to 8.5%
commissions of anything people buy from
Amazon within 24 hours of clicking on your
affiliate link.
The real benefit of using Amazon Associates
is that there are very few things you can’t buy
from Amazon. Whatever your niche may be,
there are likely to be products that you can
recommend on Amazon. Amazon also have
excellent conversion rates, which makes it
easier for you to earn commissions.
Affiliate Network Aggregators –
If you want to refer customers to high street brands or
specific companies, like American Express or JC Penney,
you will likely need to use an affiliate network aggregator.
There are a ton of these, including Commission
Junction, Clickbank, ShareaSale, and LinkShare. Using
these services you can join the affiliate programs of many
brands and online stores. Every brand has a different
commission structure – some offer as much as 50% of the
sale, whereas others offer as little as 1%.

Setting up
Google
Analytics
GOOGLE ANALYTICS IS HOW
WE MONITOR OUR WEBSITE’S
PERFORMANCE, AND WHAT
OUR VISITORS ARE DOING ON
OUR WEBSITE. WE CAN EVEN
SEEN WHAT PEOPLE DO ON
SPECIFIC PAGES OF OUR SITE.
Here’s what GA looks like when
we drill down to view the stats
on our article ‘20 Best Sites for
Royalty Free Stock Images &
Creative Commons Photos’.
In one glance, we can see that the traffic to this post is
generally increasing. We can see that the majority of traffic
is coming from search engines (the orange line), and that on
average people spend 2.49 minutes reading the article.

IF WE DRILLED DOWN EVEN
FURTHER WE COULD FIND
OUT WHERE THOSE VISITORS
COME FROM (BY COUNTRY
OR CITY), AS WELL AS
WHAT THEIR BROWSER OR
OPERATING SYSTEM IS.
In other words, Google Analytics
gives us a lot of information on who
our audience is. It also tells us what
we’re doing that’s working, and
what isn’t.
As Google Analytics is completely
free to install, it’s best to install it
and gather data even if you don’t
think you’ll use it much to begin
with.
To get setup, visit analytics.
google.com, sign up for an account,
and add a website. You’ll receive a
snippet of code that you’ll need to
copy and paste into your website’s
header. Once this is added, GA will
begin gathering data for you!

SPECIAL ISSUE
chapter
HOW TO MAKE
YOUR FIRST
ONLINE SALE
When it comes to
selling, you can either
work hard or you can
work smart. When
I first launched Venture
Harbour, I chose
the former.
The business grew
month-on-month until
ten months later, I
crashed. Since then,
I’ve grown the business
the smart way, using
systems.
I want to be clear in
saying that working
smart isn’t inherently
better than working
hard. I believe they
both have their place.
The reality is that you’ll
probably need to work
hard and hustle to
attract your first few
customers.
Over the long run,
though, I’ve learned
that hard work is
overrated and rarely
sustainable. Working
smart, on the other
hand, is. So, what are
we talking about when
we talk about working
smart?
In short, we’re talking
about automation,
building systems,
and making yourself
obsolete to the running
of your business.

The three
systems
A FEW DAYS AGO I CAME
ACROSS A GREAT CONCEPT
BY RAMIT SETHI. HE EXPLAINS
THAT IN ORDER TO SCALE YOUR
ONLINE BUSINESS YOU NEED
THREE SYSTEMS:
A system
for getting
attention
A system for
capturing
data
A system
for selling
products
We’ll touch on each of these in a moment,
but first – why systems?
If you talked to me about systems two years
ago my eyes would have glazed over. Today,
when I hear the word systems they light up.
Perhaps I need to get out more…
The band U2 have a great song called ‘With
or without you’, which I’m pretty certain is
all about building systems for your online
business. See, a system will run itself with or
without you, You could be sitting on a beach in
the Bahamas sipping Mai Tais, and your system
would still be plugging away.
Because of this, it can scale.

My first (accidentally)
successful online
business
MY FIRST SUCCESSFUL
ONLINE BUSINESS WAS
MUSICLAWCONTRACTS.COM.
I BUILT IT AS A FRIEND OF
MINE ASKED IF I COULD HELP
HIM SELL THE CONTRACT
TEMPLATES HE WAS CREATING
FOR HIS CLIENTS. AT THE TIME, I
WAS RUNNING THE MUSICIAN’S
GUIDE, AND WAS HAPPY TO
INTRODUCE HIS CONTRACTS
TO OUR READERS.
I uploaded the contracts he sent
over and left it. At first, nothing
happened, but after six months or so
we began to see a few sales come in.
Over the past three years this
website has consistently generated
around $1,000 per month. The income
is completely passive, 100% profit, and
requires no ongoing work whatsoever.
Now, you might be thinking that
$1,000 per month is not really
a life transforming amount of
income to be generating.
Maybe not, but the point is that
because it runs like clockwork, it
doesn’t require an exchange of
time. Imagine what happens when
you own 10 or 100 of these kinds
of businesses?
It’s just like building a real
estate empire. Sure, the first
property you buy might net
you an extra $300 per month.
So what? But most real estate
entrepreneurs go on to own 20, 50,
100, or 500 properties. The results
then compound.
All of the great books on personal
finance like Rich Dad Poor Dad, The
Richest Man in Babylon, and Secrets of
the Millionaire Mindset all emphasise
one thing: passive income.

PASSIVE INCOME REQUIRES SYSTEMS.
SO HOW DO YOU BUILD SYSTEMS INTO
YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS TO GENERATE
SALES WHILE YOU SLEEP? LET’S
GO THROUGH THE THREE SYSTEMS
MENTIONED BY RAMIT EARLIER:
A system for
getting attention
Think of this as any form of marketing that
generates a positive ROI (return on investment) and
doesn’t require an ongoing commitment of your
time.
This can be different for every online business.
I’ll share a few of the ways I’m doing this with a
handful of projects that I work on:
Venture Harbour
- We predominantly focus on
content marketing to attract
traffic. We regularly produce
content like this article which
brings traffic to our site via
search engines and social
media.
A proportion of those
people then contact us to
consult to them. While it takes
a long time to produce the
content, once it’s live, it helps
to drive traffic for a long time.
What Is My
Comfort Zone –
This site is so unusual that it
regularly gets coverage on
sites like The Next Web and
Smart Planet (which drives
users).
We’ve also worked out
that for every person who
measures their comfort zone,
they generate (on average)
1.1 new visitors through social
sharing. This system means
that we have a constant
stream of new users.
FanDistro – This is a
client of ours who uses an
ongoing Facebook advertising
campaign that consistently
drives a hundreds of new
users to their website at a
cost effective ROI.

WE OCCASIONALLY TWEAK
THIS CAMPAIGN, BUT EVEN
IF WE WERE TO LEAVE IT
RUNNING FOR MONTHS, IT’D
STILL WORK JUST FINE.
As you can see, there’s no right or
wrong way of doing this, and each
approach has its pro’s and con’s. The
point is that we could do nothing for
a month and, thanks to the traffic
generating systems, all three of
these projects would continue to
generate new visitors.
Experiment with different traffic
sources to see which systems work
for you. To get you started, here are
some traffic sources that you can
experiment with:
Run a Google Adwords ad campaign
Run a Facebook Ad campaign
Run a contest on social media
Create an epic blog post that will
attract potential leads
Build a YouTube channel and add
regular video content

A system for
capturing data
WHAT GOOD IS TRAFFIC
IF YOU DO NOTHING
WITH IT? THE NEXT
PHASE IS TO BUILD A
SYSTEM THAT CAPTURES
USER DATA. THE MOST
VALUABLE PIECE OF
DATA IS THEIR EMAIL
ADDRESS.
At a very basic level, people will only
exchange their personal data with
you if they get something in return.
This may just be your wisdom in the
form of a regular newsletter. It might
be something more tangible, like an
eBook or, if you’re in a B2B (business to
business) niche, a white paper.
Remember, we want this to be a ‘set
and forget’ system that drives a regular
stream of new leads for you. A good
place to start would be to add a signup
form on your website that encourages
readers to sign up to your newsletter.
NEWSLETTER

BELOW IS A GOOD EXAMPLE
OF HOW UNBOUNCE DO THIS
ON THEIR BLOG.
Alternatively, you could get creative by
giving your readers something to do or sign
up for.
BrowserStack do a good job of this. They
allow anyone to test their website across
multiple browsers in return for some basic
personal data. This allows them to build an
enormous database of web developers and
designers to market their premium services to.

A system for
driving sales
NOW THAT YOU HAVE SYSTEMS
FOR CAPTURING TRAFFIC AND
COLLECTING LEADS WORKING LIKE
CLOCKWORK, IT’S TIME TO START
MONETISING THOSE LEADS. TO DRIVE
SALES, WE NEED THREE THINGS:
A product
(it doesn’t
necessarily need to
be your own product
if you’re an affiliate).
A pitch
to sell that product.
A platform
to communicate that
pitch to your leads.

The Product
WE’VE ALREADY
DISCUSSED THE
PROS AND CONS OF
DIFFERENT KINDS
OF PRODUCTS AND
MONETISATION
METHODS, SO I WON’T
GO INTO THAT HERE.
However, I want to raise the importance of
creating evergreen products. By evergreen
we simply mean a product that won’t go out
of date for a long time.
Too many times I’ve heard from friends
who wrote an eBook or filmed an online
course that they were hoping to set and
forget. Then, they realised that aspects of
their book or course became outdated.
Predictably, they ended up spending years
chasing their tails.
I can’t stress how important it is to be able
to leave your product alone for a long period
of time. Everything from your payment
system (WooCommerce) to your
follow up emails should be 100%
automated.
If they’re not, you’re going to be
that person that hasn’t had a holiday
in five years and checks their phone
every ten minutes while out at dinner.
Don’t be that person.

The Pitch
HOW YOU PITCH YOUR
PRODUCT IS MORE OF
AN ART THAN A SCIENCE.
IT CAN TAKE YEARS TO
LEARN AND DECADES TO
MASTER.
“Only a fool learns from
his own mistakes. The
wise man learns from the
mistakes of others.”
A good place to start would be to heed
Otto Von Bismark’s advice:
There are thousands of great case studies,
training courses, and business owners willing
to share their perspectives on what does
and doesn’t work. In my opinion, the
best way to learn how to improve
your pitch is to simply test it.
Using a tool like VWO (Visual
Website Optimizer) you can test how
different landing pages affect your
conversion rate. For inspiration, you
can see the results of thousands of
tests and case studies from existing
VWO customers.

The Platform
HOW YOU DELIVER
YOUR PRODUCT TO
YOUR CUSTOMERS
CAN MAKE OR BREAK
HOW SMOOTHLY YOUR
BUSINESS RUNS.
For years, MusicLawContracts.com
had a crappy self-coded integration with
PayPal. This was causing about one third
of customers to end up not receiving
the product they bought. We had angry
customers contact us daily, and we
spent more time doing customer service
than we did trying to grow the business.
Then, one day I decided enough was
enough. I implemented WooCommerce.
We haven’t been emailed by a
customer in a long time. The platform
runs so smoothly that we don’t even
have to think about it.
With some of our clients we use
an amazing piece of software called
Infusionsoft. Without going into too
much detail (here’s a more in-depth
review of Infusionsoft), Infusionsoft is
a really smart piece of software that
allows you to set up follow up emails
and campaigns based on specific
customer behaviour.
For example, if it’s one of your
customer’s birthdays, you can use
Infusionsoft to send them a 20%
discount. If a lead has looked at a
product on your website, you can send
them an email asking if they needed
any help.

The #1 skill every
entrepreneur
should learn
EVERY HUMAN
ON THIS PLANET
SHOULD LEARN
SALES. HERE’S WHY
– EVERYTHING IS
SALES.
Sales has some bad connotations,
but ultimately it boils down to the
ability to effectively and honestly
communicate with people. Sales
is the true test of personal and
interpersonal skills.
We’re not talking about snake
oil car salesmen here. We’re
talking about the people we feel
warm around, who help solve our
problems.
Last year, I spent a morning with John
Perrin who founded Tactical Sales Training.
At first, I was reluctant to go on the course,
as I never considered myself a sales person.
I’d tell myself “you’re a marketer and an
entrepreneur, not a salesman”. Bullshit. We’re
all sales people whether we like it or not.
The afternoon after John’s course, I closed
a potential client over the phone in half an
hour. This was unheard of – usually clients
took weeks, if not months to close. Maybe it
was a fluke?
The months following the training,
clients began to sign up more and more
effortlessly. I also began to notice that I was
communicating better with my girlfriend,
friends, and virtually everyone I came into
contact with. I realised that what I’d learned
about sales wasn’t just relevant to making
sales.
I want to share three key lessons that
I learned from John with you. If you’re in
South England, I highly recommend going
along to one of their courses, but for
those who aren’t here are some valuable
takeaways.

1) Be brutally honest – According to
John, the number one quality of a top sales person is
honesty. As a marketing consultancy, we’re often asked
questions like “why should we pick you over [insert
competing agency]?”
I’d usually respond with some mediocre response
about how we’re more specialised in a certain area, or
how we have a proven track record with various clients.
Since John’s training, i’ve began to simply respond
to this question by acknowledging that most of our
competitors are actually really good.
Similarly, I often advise our clients to just go for
the cheapest options in our proposals, if that’s all
they need. This builds trust, which is fundamental for
building your customer base.
When growing your online business this is extremely
important, because you don’t necessary have the
benefit of speaking to your customers face to face.
Honesty has to shine through every aspect of your
business, from your website copy to your email
responses.
2) Ask better
questions – If you ask a crap
question, you’ll get a crap answer.
Learning to ask good questions is one
of the most important things you can
do to boost your sales.
We had a potential client last year
who requested three meetings, over ten
phone calls, and five revised proposals
from us. They never became a client.
That works out at around five days of
un-billable work down the drain. It was
entirely my fault for not asking the right
questions.

3) Measure what matters,
and do what needs to be
done – In the course, John asked me how
many potential clients I’d called that month.
Embarrassingly, the answer was zero. I was
waiting for potential clients to call me.
I was scared of calling up potential clients
and getting turned down.
Sales is, to a large extent, a numbers game.
At first, you might need to call or email 50
potential clients to get one sale. But, if you’re
measuring what works and what doesn’t,
soon you’ll be able to contact 30, and then 20,
potential clients to get a sale.
The biggest lesson that I learned from John
was ironically something I’ve been preaching
for years with my talks on comfort zones.
Get out of your comfort zone and just get on
with whatever needs to be done to grow your
business.
After John’s training I began asking
potential clients two great questions:
When do you expect to kick off with
this project?
Is their any reason whatsoever that this
might not go ahead on that day?
If the potential client picked a date
four months down the line, I’d then ask
“what’s stopping us from kicking off next
month?”
The answer to this question can be
extremely revealing as to their situation.
But it’s the second question that really
gets to the heart of whether or not
they’re committed or not.

Feedback is more
important than
making the sale
WHEN YOU FIRST
LAUNCH YOUR BUSINESS,
YOUR AIM SHOULD BE
TO COLLECT AS MUCH
INFORMATION FROM
YOUR POTENTIAL
CUSTOMERS AS
POSSIBLE. THIS SHOULD
BE PRIORITISED OVER
MAKING THE SALE.
Why? Because feedback will enable
you to quickly iterate your product or
offering to be more in line with what
your customers want.
In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries talks
about the iteration cycle.
In essence, Eric advises that the
less time it takes you to go from
coming up with an idea to improve
your business to getting feedback,
the faster you can improve.

Building your
audience
A FEW MONTHS AGO I WROTE
AN ENORMOUS POST ON THE
ULTIMATE STARTUP MARKETING
STRATEGY, WHICH OUTLINES
MOST OF THE POPULAR
METHODS FOR INCREASING
YOUR ONLINE SALES.
To avoid repeating the content
in that guide, I’m not going to
talk about tactics here. If you
want to learn how SEO, video
marketing, or conversion rate
optimisation can be used to
grow your online business, I
recommend downloading the guide
from Foundr Magazine.

THAT’S ME DONE –
YOUR MOVE
STARTING AN ONLINE BUSINESS
IS NOT EASY, BUT IT CAN BE
EXTREMELY LIBERATING AND
REWARDING.
I’ve done my best to cover
virtually every aspect I can
think of to ensure that your
online business has a great
foundations. That said, no two
online businesses are the same,
and so you will undoubtedly
have many unique challenges
and obstacles to overcome.
In hindsight, those obstacles
are a great thing. They force you
to learn and grow, which is all
part of the adventure of building
a business.
So, congratulations on making
it to the end of this guide!
I hope that learning from my
mistakes and wins will save you
at least a handful of headaches
and tough days.
Finally, remember what Laotzu
said. A journey of a thousand
miles begins with a small step.
Take that next small step –
now.
SPECIAL ISSUE