"How Do You Get Traffic?"

As promised, I'm tackling more of your questions today.

But before we get to that, I want to start today's issue with a small disclaimer.

As you may know, I spend every Wednesday talking to my Business Growth System (or "BGS") clients during our weekly Q&A calls.

I stay on the phone until every question is answered, so it's not usual for these BGS calls to go for five or six hours each week.

There's a reason these calls take that long. It's because I make sure I understand each client's specific situation before I answer his or her question.

Now when answering your questions here in One Step Ahead, I obviously don't know the specifics about your business, so I can't speak to your exact situation.

What I can do is give you some ideas to help point you in the right direction. That is what I have endeavored to do below.

So with that disclaimer firmly in place, let's dive into your questions...

                                    "How Do I Get More Traffic?"

Siriol writes, "How do you get traffic (other than social bookmarking)? What do you need to offer each month in a membership site? Thanks!"

As you can imagine, I receive this traffic question fairly often. And I always respond the same way, before you worry about driving traffic to your site, it's worth asking yourself...

Do you have a traffic-worthy business?

In other words, even if you had all the traffic in the world, courtesy of retargeting campaigns, solo ads on Facebook, content marketing etc... would you be able to monetize that traffic once it came to your site?

Also once all this traffic comes to your site, do you already have an irresistible offer in place to ensure that these casual browsers turn into customers once they reach your website? If not, then I would turn your focus on your business before you worry about getting traffic.

For more on this, I recommend you check out my blog post. on having a "traffic-worthy" business.

As for a membership site, there are dozens of different kinds of content you can offer each month to your members.

For example, you could offer a new online publication each month (like a newsletter, report, online magazine etc.), you could offer a new in-depth training video each month, or you could host a live webinar or livestream each month.

Honestly, what kind of content you offer is not as important as how valuable that content is. You want your members to be screaming for more content each month so you can build your membership site. The fastest way to do that is to create counterintuitive content they can't get anywhere else.

A while back I wrote a blog post with specific steps on how you create counterintuitive content. I'd recommend you check it out.

                             "How Do You Write a Business Plan?"

Quin writes: "Right now I'm a handyman wanting to change my direction and become an offline consultant."

"I have looked around on the Internet and found many solid ways to start a business but for me, what is most needed that I have not seen many people show is how you write a business plan. Can you suggest the keys or essential steps to creating a business plan?"

First, I want to tell you the best business ideas are built on your strengths. If you're already a handyman (and that's your main area of expertise) than that knowledge can be translated into a consultancy - if you want to build a business around that.

But regardless of what business you're creating, you need a profit model. That's your business plan.

Your profit model can be as simple as getting out a piece of paper to brainstorm the following two points: Your customer acquisition strategy and your customer's lifetime value strategy.

Your customer acquisition strategy is what you'll be doing to get new customers. A customer's lifetime value is how much one customer will be worth to your business over the long haul. So your "lifetime value strategy" is what you'll do to increase the value of your customers once you have them.

So step #1: Acquire customers. Finding and getting customers is really about attracting attention. Every business has to attract enough attention to reach potential customers. 

So that goes into your profit model... How will you attract attention to your business? (For example, will you use a free report, a blog series, special offer etc?)

Once you have that attention, the next step is conversion. Step #2: How will you convert those prospects into buyers once you have their attention?

Once you acquire customers: Step #3: How will you increase the value you get from each of those customers? You can do that with upsells, new products, extra services for repeat customers etc.

These are questions that every new business owner must ask. If you want a full detailed account of how to answer them, I recommend you checkout my client report, The Business Blueprint.

In this 76-page report, I walk you through how I created the profit model for Strategic Profits - and how to copy the strategy yourself. 

         "Is There An Outline of Typical Strategies for Business Start-ups?"

John asks: "Is there an outline for typical strategies for business development regarding a new business start-up?"

Yes, there is. I have an outline in my Business Blueprint report. Also, I would recommend you checkout the "lean" start-up method.

If you're not familiar with "lean," it's a new scientific approach to starting a business fast that's gaining in popularity. I actually wrote a Founders Club report on the lean approach for entrepreneurs last year for my clients.

Basically, the lean approach is all about testing until you find the right business idea, product, and customer base for that product.

If you want to know more about the lean start-up method, there are several books in the marketplace right now that can give you a good primer on it including "Getting to Plan B," by John Mullins, "Little Bets" by Peter Sims, and "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya.

               "How Do You Transition from a 9-5 to Your Own Business?"

Tom asks: "What is the best way to transition from being an employee with a steady job to being a self-employed business person considering the bills still have to be paid?"

In my opinion, the best way is to keep your full-time job at first, and spend two hours a day growing your business on nights and weekends.

The reason I say that is often entrepreneurs waste a lot of time at first, trying to get started with their businesses. If you have a time limit every day of only two hours when you can work on your business - you'll likely be significantly more productive in those two hours than someone who has all day to "work on their business."

So I would recommend you block out that time every day to ONLY work on your business. See how fast you can get started doing the bare minimum needed to grow your business.

For more on the bare minimum needed to grow your business, you may want tocheckout my recent blog post.

Okay, it's time to wrap up this issue. I'll be back with more answers to your questions soon. Until then...

To higher profits and beyond,

Rich

P.S. If you have more questions, be sure to submit them below. Speak to you soon.