I always wanted a fully automated website business. Little did I know what was involved in building one! There’s a couple of ways of building a fully automated website business. You can go the long, slow route, or the faster, more expensive route.
When I started building websites, back in 2010, I had no money for paid marketing. I worked at building up content on my websites and attempted to get them ranking on Google. I failed a number of times but took it as a learning curve.
Ranking a website on Google is hard. So your best bet is to use paid marketing or there’s also social media marketing. Don’t go for top place on Google because you’ll probably fail. Instead share your content and link to it. Think of a listing on Google as a bonus if it happens!
Fully Automated Website Business – Fast Strategy
The fast way to build a fully automated website business is to use affiliate marketing products which allow you to use paid marketing. For most products, including low paid physical products you might find on Amazon, you’ll only get 11% commission on the highest paid ones.
If all you’ve got to sell from your website is physical products, you’ll need to use free marketing strategies. Paid marketing will be too expensive to recoup your money on low value items. You need a large value digital products. Or, better still a range of large value items which you can sell through a sales funnel.
Why use a sales funnel?
Fully Automated Website Business – A Sales Funnel
A sales funnel can start on a website. What a sales funnel can give you is more profit. Most people don’t buy immediately from an unknown website. People need to see a product several time before making a buying decision. Sometimes many more. When someone lands on your website they only have a small window of opportunity to purchase something. After 10 minutes tops they’re gone! Most will be gone forever and never return!
If you get your visitors to subscribe to your email list, you can keep in touch with them through an automated email marketing service. This will dramatically extend the time with which they can make a purchasing decision. On a website they have only around 10 minutes or less. On your email list you can sell to them even months or years later.
High Ticket Items – Your Products
But anyway, back to the products. A low value product won’t help you build a fully automated website business. You’ll most likely struggle to get traffic and spend heaps of time creating content for it unless you know what you’re doing.
With a high ticket product range, you can use paid marketing. This means you’ll set up a Google compliant website and use YouTube or Adwords, or even Facebook to send customers directly to it via paid marketing.
But you can’t do this with low value products because you won’t make enough to recoup your advertising spend.
A good product range should contain:
- High value digital products – high value lets you earn more per sale and digital products pay larger commissions per sale than physical type products.
- Recurring commissions affiliate programs – keep money coming in from existing customers from membership/subscription/software products
- Multi-tier products – let you earn commissions from sales made by your team
- Built in sales team – close sales on your behalf
- A range of up-sells (product range starting at a low price) – lets you sell to more people with different needs and budgets
A Slower Strategy – The Cheaper Option
Of course having a range of high ticket products in your sales funnel comes at a cost. If you’re unable to meet that cost there are cheaper methods.
One of these is the niche website. See how to build a niche website and get free traffic. A niche website is built around a specific keyword/topic which has been well researched. It takes time and effort to build up a niche website. This website is an example of one. You can read about I this site was built in this article: create free website and earn money.
Using Social Media For Traffic
You don’t even need a website if you want to use another strategy. But having a website is a good idea since it gives you a digital business card to share to people online quickly and easily.
Using social media is another strategy to gain a following to your website. Facebook is a good source for traffic if you don’t want to, or can’t afford the paid traffic route.
Join groups in your niche. You can join various Facebook groups which would be a good fit for your target audience. Set up your Facebook profile to send people to your website. Then interact with people in those groups and offer value and insight. Don’t just spam them with your website link. Offer real value and be a real human being. Make connections and interact with other real people.
Over time, and by doing this regularly, you’ll start to gain some traction.
Products
You’ll still need a product whatever you do. If you don’t have a product or business of your own to promote, look for products which interest you personally. I was interested in building an online business so looked for online support and business systems and products. I found an online community which has helped me understand digital marketing strategies and build an online business from scratch.
You can also find products in pretty much any niche. So if you already have a passion or interest do a quick Google search for “{insert your passion} affiliate programs”. You should find something suitable for your audience according to what kind of content you want to create on your website.
For a fully automated website business you’ll ideally want to use digital products or affiliate products of some kind. With your own product or service, it won’t be fully automated because you’ll be stuck posting something out or selling away your time in your business. See also fully automated online business.