How to Start an Online Business

I wanted to figure out how to start an online business many years before I was actually able to accomplish it. More than a decade ago, I set out to find a way to work at home, have my own business, set my own hours and be my own boss. I researched, read books, and spent countless hours searching the internet to figure out what kind of business I could have.

Honestly, I cannot believe how difficult it was to find out how to start an online business! There were tons of scams – people offering to teach me how to work at home online if I was willing to pay them a ton of money for doing so.

Finally, in 2015, I found a company called Wealthy Affiliate. They teach Affiliate Marketing, which turned out to be the ideal online business for me. They provided the beginner training for free, and didn’t charge me for advanced training until I actually had my own website, knew what Affiliate Marketing was and how to do it, and was well on my way to earning revenue.

Wealthy Affiliate breaks down their training into four steps.

1) Choosing a niche (topic)

2) Creating a website (or blog)

3) Driving traffic to your website and

4) Earning commissions.

Each of these four steps is taught within the first 10 lessons.

The First 10 Lessons are Absolutely FREE

Lesson 1: Getting Rolling
This training includes a welcome video from Kyle, one of the owners of Wealthy Affiliate who does all the training. He shows you how to set up your account, takes you an a walk-through of Wealthy Affiliate, describes the four steps to start your own business, and helps you set your goals. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 2: Understanding How to Make Money Online
In this training, Kyle shows you how you make MONEY online. It includes a step-by-step video explaining the process, and help with creating your financial goals. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 3: Choose a Niche
This is where Kyle helps you to choose the topic (or niche) for your website. It includes a step-by-step video explaining several points to consider when choosing your niche and how to choose one that will be profitable, and that you will love. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 4: Building Your Own Niche Website
Kyle starts this training by saying, “Building a website ain’t scary – it’s fun!” LOL It includes Kyle’s, “Building Your Website in 30 Seconds” video, and teaches you how to choose what type of website you want, the website name and domain, and its design. He’ll also show you the many already-built-in features they do for you for your website. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 5: Setting Up Your Website
This training shows you how to set up your website and get it ready to start creating content. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 6: Getting Your Site Ready for Search Engines
The three major search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo. In this training, Kyle provides a full, step-by-step video teaching you how a website gets ranked in the search engines with something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). He’ll show you all the ways Wealthy Affiliate already has your website built to maximize this. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 7: Creating Your Initial Website Content
This lesson includes a video on creating your initial website framework, and show you how to create an “About Me” page and a “Privacy Policy” page. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 8: Creating Custom Menus On Your Website
Presenting your website in an organized way will make it easy and enjoyable for your visitors to navigate. In this lesson, Kyle does a step-by-step video on how to create a customized menu for your website (which will be a huge help to you later when you start creating content!). You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 9: Understanding Keywords, the Start of Your Content
This lesson includes detailed training on what a keyword is, and how to use keywords to get your website actually seen online. Learning how to target the right keywords truly makes the difference between success and failure online. Kyle will show you in the training the keyword tool they created called Jaaxy. I use Jaaxy every single day in my business. You can do this training for free HERE.

Lesson 10: Congratulations and Your Next Steps
At this point, you’ll be super excited because you will actually HAVE your own online business! You can do this training for free HERE.

By this time, you will have accomplished the following:

Set-up your account profile at Wealthy Affiliate
Interacted with others fellow marketers and aspiring marketers via live chat
Understood the process of earning money online
Set your idealistic short and long term “make money” goals
Chosen your niche from scratch
Named and built your very OWN website using WordPress
Set-up the website to be geared for long-term success
Activated your website plugins
Understand how to set-up plugins that maximize website efficiency
Optimized your website for search engines (Google, Yahoo, & Bing)
Created your very first page of content on your website
Have created many relationships with others at WA
Have gotten timely help when you needed it
Understood the process of keyword research
Found a bunch of awesome, low-competition keywords
Learned how to properly set-up your website navigation
Learned a bunch of powerful stuff that is going to help you SUCCEED.

You Can Go Further If You Choose

Once you complete the 10 lessons contained in the free starter training, you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade to Wealthy Affiliate’s Premium Membership if you choose. The first month is $19, then it’s either $49 per month or you can choose to pay annually to save money. This is where you get more advanced training and can take full advantage of everything Wealthy Affiliate has to offer. You can read my full overview of Wealthy Affiliate’s Premium Membership HERE.

You Don’t Have to Figure This Out by Yourself

As you can see, Wealthy Affiliate teaches you absolutely everything you need to know to start an online business. It’s the business I hoped and wished for all those years ago, and I’ve been doing this full time since 2015 as a direct result of the training at Wealthy Affiliate.

The first 10 lessons are free, plus there are another 10 free lessons in their “Affiliate Bootcamp.” That’s a course where they teach you how you can create a website to promote Wealthy Affiliate if you’d rather do that instead of choosing another topic. I personally have both – the website you’re on right now which promotes Wealthy Affiliate, and my “passion” website. Both websites are so fun to work on, and I truly love my job now. Imagine that. 🙂

I hope you’ll sign up for the free training at Wealthy Affiliate and see if this may turn out to be the ideal online business for you like it’s been for me. Thanks so much for visiting! Debra