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HOW TO START AN ONLINE STORE IN INDIA USING WORDPRESS [STEP-BY-STEP]

Note: This article was originally published on www.websitetipstricks.com and you can read it from here.

“I have a famous brand for customized bike accessories. How could I bring it online and maximize my sales?”

“I want to start an online fashion store for sell the designer dresses & jewelry. Please let me know the steps required to build one.”

“We are a small group of housewives and make handmade crafts. What’s the process to sell these things online?”

“I have a local business of toy-making. Can I build an e-commerce store to sell these products?”

These are many of the questions about how to start an online business, and in this fast-paced environment, you need to get a right answer.

Before a few years, local businesses were making enough profit from their traditional sales & marketing activities. But with the rise of internet & large retail e-commerce brands like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal & Myntra, etc. many local businesses have lost their market share significantly.

There was a time when we used to go to a grocery shop to buy some household goods, but this everything has changed.

Now, retail brands like Amazon (Pantry) & BigBasket has captured this market too. You can choose the things you want & they will deliver these products to your doorstep.

Isn’t it amazing?

So, to be in the market, it’s wise to go digital along with the traditional even you have a good reputation & solid customer base.

And, if you are one who is struggling to start an online store, don’t worry.

I’m going to tell you the simplest and step-by-step process to build your online store as well as promote it to get maximum ROI.

Though I can’t guarantee about sales, I’m sure that your honest efforts will make a distinct change in your current business.

Let’s see how you can also start an online business.

Idea Validation: Am I going right?

Suppose, you have decided to start an online business, the first thing you need to do is an idea validation.

Be careful of not being too obsessed with your idea because if the market for the product does not exist, then it may not be worth selling.

For example,

Currently, Reliance is selling JIO phones with unlimited data & calls. Will it be a right decision to create a brand to tackle them if you don’t have investments in billions & solid business plan?

Don’t get it emotional, be practical and think about what I’m trying to say.

It’s worthless to spend your time & money on stupid things that don’t bring positive ROI to you.

Sometimes, you will get success by finding loopholes in the strategies of existing businesses, but it’s rare when such tricks have got scaled to great visibility & flooding revenue.

To be honest, no one can give you 100% guarantee that your idea will work, but you can figure out what strategies you need to have to convert your plan into a successful business.

Market research is a key tool to find whether your concept can make big or not.

There are many theories but let me tell you a few simple tips that a noob can also implement.

You must enlist some products that you want to sell on an online store. There are a ton of categories to choose the products. It can be a garment product, customized mobile cases, electronics items or designer jewelry.

Make sure you have significant knowledge of that particular niche because business can’t be learned overnight. An experience & in-depth knowledge matters a lot even you are doing it online.

Some people may have no business background but learning new skills & keep experimenting can make a positive difference.

However, this article is useful for everyone to validate an idea, estimate market potential for the product, and prepare you the roadmap to start an online store.

Estimate Market Potential Through Keyword Research

The first step in building a store online is market research to find the buying potential, and the keyword research is a great way to see how many people are currently searching for the product you want to sell.

There are many free as well as premium tools like SEMRush, Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, Ubersuggest, etc.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a great tool you can use. Currently, you need an active AdWords account to use this tool with all functionalities and creating one is a matter of minutes.

You can sign up for this service with a Gmail account and start exploring insights about the market. It shows keywords, monthly search volume, and other useful data.

If you are already using it, then no problem, but for the people who haven’t tested it can sign up here for Google AdWords account.

Then, simply sign in to your account, select Tools from the top menu >> select Keyword Planner >> click Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category to perform the keyword research.

For example, here is a snapshot of the keyword analysis shown by Google AdWords Keyword Planner for the term complete makeup kit.

If the average monthly searches for the keyword is high, it indicates that the particular product has a high search popularity. It means people are actively looking out for products related to those keywords and that validates the demand for your product idea.

Competitors Analysis

“What will happen if I enter in a competitive niche?” “Will I make money?”

These are a few questions arise in everyone’s mind when they see competition for a particular product.

Contrary to widespread perception that the competition is bad for business, it’s actually good and indicates that you have a market to sell your product.

As shown in the above screenshot, you can use the Google Keyword Planner tool to find the level of competition for each keyword. Though it’s a good sign of profitability, appropriate marketing strategies are required to tackle that competition. Because your competitors won’t be sitting quite just to see how much sales you are generating.

If you have a budget to spend on marketing activities especially on premium SEO tools, you can try SEMRush or Ahrefs for keyword research and market analysis.

These tools will provide more details along with keyword research like

Organic and paid search results

Related Keywords

Traffic volume

Level of competition, competitors, and their website details

For keyword research, three major parameters you must look for your competitors are,

Search Volume

CPC (Cost Per Click)

Competition(0-1)

For example, below is a snapshot of the analysis for the keyword “complete makeup kit.” You can do a similar search for your product idea and check out the details of your competition.

Volume or Average Monthly Searches is the average number of search for a particular keywords/search queries per month over the last 12 months of time-period.

The volume shows the popularity of the search query. Higher the search volume, then more its popularity. It means the market has buying potential.

CPC Or Cost Per Click is the average minimum price that advertisers pay to get a click on their Google AdWords ad that displayed up for a given keyword.

Higher CPC indicates that the particular keyword has a higher value as well as competition and more people are trying to bid for that keyword to appear in search results (paid) to grab maximum potential customers.

Competition (0-1) is an index of advertisers bidding on this keyword for their ads. A score of 1 indicates the maximum competition while as the 0 indicates no competition for the searched keyword.

To keep yourself distinctly ahead in the competition, you should come with a USP (not in features but in benefits) and provide the best customer service.

Selecting a niche & the product that people actually want, you can win the market. Make sure you have a proper blend of quality & VFM in your products that grab the attention of maximum people.

Talk to Your Potential Customers

Though the keyword research is a great way to find market potential, try to engage with your potential customers online as well as offline to know whether they want to buy your products or not, what they really like & expect from your product, etc.

That’s not all, ask them the feedback about your current product so you can improve it to cater the interest of maximum people.

There are many steps to find out that, but I have mentioned here the few which you can use easily.

Social Media

Start discussions on the social media. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are great tools to get real feedbacks from a ton of people.

You can tag relevant people to get the opinion who have good knowledge of that particular niche.

Social polls are also great where you can easily count statistics to validate your ideas.

Find Influencers

Many people have built an authority in a specific domain. You can contact such people to get their opinion on your idea.

These people have years of experience trying many things where they have got a big success as well as the failure too.

Getting connected with them can bring more insights that you can’t find only by doing keyword research.

If you have a prototype of the product, you can ask them to review it and suggest improvements.

Isn’t it a good idea?

Customers Reviews

Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, PayTM, etc. are big brands in e-commerce sector featuring thousands of sellers.

You can read customer reviews of your product’s competitors over there to figure out what kind of product you can sell in your store.

Since the feedbacks received from social media connections would be limited, employing the indirect methods like this can help you understand the customer requirements.

For example, if you plan to sell home decor products on your online store, you can go to Amazon or Flipkart and search for this term to check out the customer reviews as shown below.

Setting Up Your Online Store

Now, you have got how to validate idea to check profitability. After evaluation of market potential, the next step is to setup your store online to sell your products.

You can choose the one way from the three listed below that suits best to your skills & requirements.

Selling products on e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, etc.

Launching an online store using the hosted e-commerce solutions like Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, etc.

Setting up your online store using self-hosted platforms like WordPress + WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento, etc.

All three options mentioned above have their own advantages and disadvantages. However, you can pick anyone to start an online store in India.

1. Selling Products on Online Marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, And PayTM, etc.

I purchase many things online and mostly prefer Amazon. One of my best friends, Sham recently ordered a smartphone from there.

You might be doing the same. Or, you can say almost every one of us has purchased some items on these e-commerce marketplaces.

Nowadays, online marketplaces are very popular among customers and actively promoting themselves across a bunch of platforms online as well as offline. Hence, you can also create an account there to start selling from day 1.

These platforms have millions of ready to buy customers if you make them feel that you provide quality products having VFM.

Still, they have a bunch of advantages and disadvantages. I have tried to list a few of them below.

Advantages of Selling Products on Online Marketplaces

A large market that’s ready to buy your products.

Zero/minimum marketing costs.

All technical stuff is taken care off including hosting, design, security, etc.

Easy promotion to improve brand awareness.

Options are available to outsource product packaging and shipping. Drop shipping is also possible.

Here are a few top Udemy courses can help you to learn dropshipping at your own.

1. Certified Dropshipping Expert by Indian Institute of eCommerce

2. Build a Dropship Empire From Scratch. The Proven Blueprint

3. eBay Drop Shipping Guide with No Inventory – Work From Home

Disadvantages of Selling Products on Online Marketplaces

Generally, you get thin profit margin and need to generate large volumes of sales for better profitability

High direct competition as other people may be selling similar products.

Minimum customer loyalty

It can’t be customized according to your requirements.

2. Launching an Online Store Using Hosted E-commerce Platforms

If you are actively searching for the information about how to build a store online, then you might have experienced a Shopify ad or a sponsored post from a digital guy who sells courses related to drop shipping via Shopify.

Am I right?

It’s not only one, but there are many hosted e-commerce solutions like BigCommerce, Volusion, etc. providing the platform to set up and launch your online store easily.

Shopify is considered as one of popular among these hosted solutions and easier for operation.

Hosted platforms are good and allow you to launch your store online in a few hours, but you can find some pros and cons for using them.

Advantages of Launching an Online Store Using Hosted E-commerce Platforms

You can organize your products, customize your storefront, accept payments by various methods as well as track and respond to orders.

Customer loyalty would be high.

Hosted e-commerce stores are easy to set up and run. You can upload your products and start running a business within no time.

All technical stuff is taken care off including hosting, security, etc. It’s fast, SEO-friendly & secure solution to start your online store (especially, when I talk about Shopify).

Free 14-day trial for Shopify

Disadvantages of Launching an Online Store Using Hosted E-commerce Platforms

The setup fees suck especially when you are starting out.

Not complete control though you have an option to customize front-end.

Add-ons & third-party integrations are mostly paid.

Email hosting is not provided though you can get a custom domain.

3. Setting Up Your Online Store Using Self-Hosted Platforms

You might have heard about self-hosted WordPress or many of you have a blog there.

So, it would be better to go with self-hosted platforms to build an e-commerce store If you don’t want to depend on marketplaces.

There are many options available including WordPress, Magento, OpenCart, etc.

Though you can pick any option from the list of CMS & development tools, I’ll be primarily talking here about the WordPress + WooCommerce only.

WordPress is the most popular CMS out there. You can integrate WooCommerce plugin with it that facilitates e-commerce functionalities to launch your online store even you don’t know how to code. Knowledge of some basic configurations is required.

If you select this option, then you need to follow the simple DIY guide written below.

Step-by-Step Process to Build an Online Store Using WordPress + WooCommerce

Remember, if you are thinking to start your e-commerce store with the help of this option, initial setup and investment of few bucks is needed, but it’s completely worth against the benefits you will be receiving.

So, let’s start with the process.

#1. The first thing you need is the business name. Choose it wisely. If you already have a business, then you can use this name also or choose a unique brand name to launch your store.

Brainstorm the ideas to get a name that’s memorable & brandable. You can choose either a niche-specific keyword/phrase or generic name depending on your requirements.

#2. The second step is to buy a domain name. You can use your business name as a domain or opt for a unique, brandable name.

Still, getting a domain that features your business name is a great option to build a brand in the market.

For an extension, prefer a .com which is the most popular on the web or other gTLD like .net after your domain, but in some cases ccTLD like .in or .co.uk maybe great choice.

#3. The next step is buying a web hosting service. For most of the people who are thinking to start an online store, SiteGround’s GrowBig plan is good which offers many premium features along with 1-year free Wildcard SSL.

But, GoGeek plan is perfect if you are going to scale your business by allocating some budget on sales & marketing activities as can handle more traffic (around 100K visitors/month) and have some advanced features like Free PCI compliance that is necessary to process payments on your site.

Sign for Sitegrounds WooCommerce Plan to Get Massive 60% Off (New customers only)

#4. Once, you move ahead and buy web hosting; you’ll receive an email with details of your Cpanel login where you can navigate to install WordPress.

#5. Now, you have WordPress installation ready, so log in to your WP dashboard to setup your e-commerce store.

The actual process begins where you create an online store on the top of WordPress using WooCommerce plugin.

#6. To proceed further, you need a theme which is e-commerce ready. Though some good themes are available in WordPress repository, I recommend using premium themes that come with advanced features and gives more controlling power.

ThemeForest, MyThemeShop are a couple of best sellers for premium themes.

You also have an option for a completely customized website for your online store, but you either need to have a hands-on experience in coding or hire a developer for this task.

It’s not always necessary as you can create a unique looking store with a bit of customization available from the dashboard itself.

#7. The next step is optimizing your site for speed, SEO, and overall performance.

Some plugins will help you out there. Akismet, W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, Yoast SEO, etc. are a few of them.

Still, some basic things you need to look carefully are,

Make sure you have appropriate permalink structure.

Your website has enabled for https (SSL).

You have a professional logo and favicon.

Important links are created & published including Privacy, TOS (regarding shipping, payments, refunds & chargebacks, etc.) as well as Disclaimer, Contact and WooCommerce pages.

Navigation

You have proper social media integration to maximize brand visibility.

You have taken care of important technical aspects including Speed, SEO, Security & Payment Processing.

Here is a Step-by-step WordPress SEO Tutorial For Beginners (LATEST)

Sourcing Your Products

Unless you have virtual services or subscription-based products, the process of sourcing the product is not that easy you might be thinking.

Just setting up online store won’t bring revenue to you. It’s necessary to have a concrete plan of products whether you are going to manufacture them or buy from the third-party suppliers to sell on your store.

You can use drop shipping method if you have reliable supplier network.

Nevertheless, I’m sharing some useful tips here which will help you to make the entire process relatively easy.

Depending on whether you are just starting out and testing your e-commerce skills or already have an experience running an online business, you can select the way to source the products for your store.

1. Pre-Launch Phase

It’s always better to test small before diving deep especially when you are tight on a budget and taking a risk on your career.

You may know that more than 90% startups fail, and I don’t want you to be there.

Before actually launching your store on full-scale, you can come with a limited inventory.

It’s the best opportunity to validate your idea in a live environment before investing a lot in your project.

With the small capital, you will have a chance to test your progress as well as time to promote your store. Just like the warm-up before the real action starts.

If you have a traditional business, then it wouldn’t be a problem to source the products. But, in many other cases, you have an option to manufacturing these products yourself or buying from wholesale market at the cheap price.

You’ll have the chance to test different pricing modules including review samples, discount codes, cashbacks, etc. that will create a pool of traffic to your website.

For example, if you have a food product like pizza, cake, etc. making it in-house is a better way because this way can ensure the quality and keep pricing strategy flexible.

Take another example.

If you want to sell customized T-shirts or sublimation products like coffee mugs, mouse pads, etc., you can create an appealing graphics at your end and outsource the rest like printing, packing, shipping, etc. and give maximum time to managing administrative work rather than doing everything yourself. It’s important when you start growing and require a team for various tasks.

2. Intermediate Phase

Once, you have gathered data and validated the market for your product, tested different strategies regarding price, promotion, etc., raised capital, and have confidence that the product will perform well for a min. estimated time, you can look for more sources to procure supplies in large quantities.

Here, you can generate more sales volume. So, hiring a team would be a no-nonsense thing to manage different tasks including procurement, finance & marketing, etc.

In this situation, bulk orders for profitable products can help you to save a big chunk of money, so, start searching for the reliable supplier or manufactures online or offline.

3. Growth Phase

After sometimes you’ll feel that you have captured enough market and established yourself as a brand. At that time, you can either start manufacturing product yourself in your own factory or directly source products from manufacturers & rebrand to your name.

If you don’t like to depend on other manufacturers/suppliers for various reasons and are ready with great investment plans, you can set up your facility to manufacture your goods.

When you aren’t manufacturing your goods, the best way to find manufacturers and suppliers is using trusted online supplier platforms like IndiaMart, Oberlo, and Alibaba that have complete details of a ton of finely categorized wholesale distributors and the products supplies.

Still, solely depending on Google and online business directories for searching the manufacturers or bulk suppliers for your products may seem finding a needle in the haystack since most of them may not have an active digital presence or optimized website featuring on the top of SERP.

Another way to source inventory is tapping into your neighborhood business networks, connecting with other people from industry sharing same interest, and attending the trade shows to meet the folks beneficial for your business.

Though I love digital, sourcing products in this phase should not be done completely online as an internet is full of scammers are waiting for your silly mistakes.

It’s always better to visit the facility before making the deals and purchases that ensures the quality of products and saves you from being trapped by the fraudulent people to avoid monetary losses.

It also helps to build a relationship & trust helping to grow mutually.

Getting Your First Sales (Proven Ways to Promote Your Store)

For almost every person starting an online business, getting the first sales may seem quite challenging.

Unless you make the real money, it’s worthless to have a solid business plan & infrastructure. So, making people buy from you and convert them into delighted customers is more important than any other things.

Yes! You can drive some traffic by using paid advertisements and marketing channels, but it would be costly especially when you haven’t tested your niche/product to its full.

Instead, you can leverage social media and a few online tools which are available for free to get your first customers.

I’m listing a few free as well as cost-efficient methods to grab customers to improve your sales.

#1. Leverage the Social Media

There is a huge number of social channels & communities including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Plus, etc.

You have a chance to use them to promote your store and get some quick sales without investing a lot.

When you will create a web store, make sure you have an account on every major social channel.

It’ll help you in brand awareness, drive quality traffic and a few sales too if you have proper funnel activated.

Try to reach maximum people in same niche liking & following the products like you have. Different groups and communities having active netizens would be a goldmine for you.

But before you start promoting the products, make sure to warm up these accounts, improve following and giving value to your prospects.

As rich-media is trending these days, creating visual contents for your social media campaigns will help you to get more reach.

Creating short videos between 30-120 seconds showing your products, store and USP can give you a hell lot of publicity without paying a dime on ads.

#2. Let Influencers Help You

It’s a tricky though; you can manage to get there.

The influencers like well-known bloggers, YouTubers, and other celebrities from different industries have large social media followings with a high engagement rate.

Simply, search for these people based on your product segment, to get their followers as your target audience.

Create a list of the influencers (excluding your direct competitors) with at least five people/pages per social media channels in an excel sheet. Once, you have this list in your hand,

Send them your product as a review sample.

Request them to promote your brand on their social media channels

Give good discounts to their followers

Lately, I found a post on a forum where one guy has posted his journey of e-com store. He is sacking a quite big money, using influencers marketing.

Let me tell what he does.

He has an online store filled with a lot of goodies that he wants to sell. Instead, of paying on CPC or CPM basis which has an uncertainty of getting sales, he requests influencers to promote his products on their page.

Don’t get me wrong, but he has a budget for that, as it’s not completely free. But, he gets what he pays for.

As he gets quality traffic that mostly converts, he is sacking around a huge 250-375% of ROI for his campaigns.

Isn’t it amazing?

Just a proper research is required as I said earlier & a few bucks.

#3. Promote Your Product Through Cost-Efficient Ads

Advertising on search networks and social media can burn a lot of money if proper care has not taken.

Unlike organic reach achieved by free promotion, spending your money in the right direction can make you quick revenue by PPC advertisements.

But there are many marketers who claim you to give cheap clicks & leads from both search engine as well as social media but remember one thing, at the end ROI matters.

So, if someone is giving a guarantee of making you the sales instead of many blank clicks, then only ask him to run your campaigns and fire the rests.

It’s always better to hire an expert who actually knows how your industry works and cares about your investment in marketing.

#4. Start Your Own Blog

You are reading this article; it means you know or at least have an idea of what a blog means.

Actually, I’m not going to explain that but starting a blog is a great way to get people to your site who are searching for your product.

By providing them value through your blog and educating about your products, it easy to convert them into your customers.

As you already have a WordPress website for your online store (that we preferred), you need not worry a lot.

You can simply turn on the blog feature from your WP admin dashboard or create a separate subdomain, especially when you have a bigger site.

A blog filled with relevant quality contents helps you to rank in search results, gets you social media shares, liked & followers, and brings more visibility for your product.

You can check the pages ranking in search engines or try some tools like BuzzSumo to get an idea of what’s popular, and people love reading. Crafting contents around these topics will surely bring you more readership, establish you as an authority, and helps to get the first few customers.

For example, if you are selling trendy apparel for men, you can search for keyword “latest fashion trends for the men” on BuzzSumo and write a blog post on ”the latest fashion trends for men” or similar to cater your readers with much interesting content.

Here’s a snapshot of the search query for the keyword “latest fashion trends for the men” on BuzzSumo.

#5. Run A Marketing Campaigns on Forums

Though social media is good for driving traffic, the conversion rate is generally less because login their social accounts to share updates, see hot contents, chatting their contacts and mostly to kill time and rarely reach to the buyer’s stage.

But, on the forums or Q&A sites, you can get targeted people having a few objections, queries or want a comparison/reviews of products.

As these people usually have great buying intent, you can promote your products there in a genuine way.

Yeah! Some people do it aggressively and which is against the rules of many forums. Though you have a chance to post a link, don’t act like a spammer.

Help people out there who want your help and indirectly turn them to visit & buy from your store.

Quora is one of the great among these all to start engaging with people and converting them into the buyers by solving their issues.

#6. Run an Online Contest/Giveaway

The contests or giveaways are proven methods of creating a viral engagement and grab a larger target audience in minimum time.

Since you will be a new business or have a small budget, you can plan contest accordingly.

The giveaways with Apple products and subscription to any popular service work great, but you can try giving your own products too creating a relationship with your target audience.

You can either run a contest with the help of influencers or use some online tools that run contest/giveaways plus capture leads/social following.

#7. Affiliate Marketing

If you have a store on online marketplaces, then affiliate marketing is an insane way to get sales. There are many publishers to promote your products if they seem it’s VFM to their readers.

By maintaining the quality of products & after-sales, you can easily make them happy to associate with you.

Offering some generous payouts, you can drive a large number of affiliates to make them work double hard for you to promote your products, ultimately increasing sales volume.

The main benefit of affiliate marketing as a business owner is you pay only when lead/sale is generated depending on the type of campaign.

Kill the Competition

“Are you serious?” “I’m not going to kill my competitor anyways!”

These reactions are common after seeing such weird heading.

You won’t be killing any human (It’s a crime! LOL), but reducing the competition by using some strategies.

As both of you have started an online store for earning the profit, you need to convince people how you’re better than the competitors and make them buy only from you.

By doing that you’ll get the reviews or testimonials from your clients providing you a competitive advantage over the rests.

Though competition is a spirit of marketing, there’s no mean by coming second when you have the ability to stand out as a winner.

Have a look for following points that will help you improve your score.

Always come with USP that differentiates your product from others.

Selling the quality products only that fulfill your customer needs. Have your own manufacturing unit or a network of quality suppliers.

Try providing great customer service and support for 24×7.

Create simple buyers journey to every part & give hassle-free shopping experience.

Ensure speedy & reliable order fulfillment.

Let feel them safe by providing all legal pages on prominent places.

Legal Journey– Business Registration and Taxation

Though starting an online store is easy and in a digital form, you still need all paperwork in your hand to avoid further legal complexions.

Registering your business in any allowed form can make you remain safe.

You can either start a sole proprietorship firm, Private Company or LLP.

In my opinion registering your business as an LLP could be a better option or you can go for private company. These firms have some advantages like liability protection in case of any litigation or raising funds from investors, etc.

Here is a snap to help you to compare your needs to register a company.

You also need a GST number to be able to ship products to your customers along with company registration. If you have any issues in legal concerns, you can either consult a C.A. or a legal advisor.

Wrapping Up

Now, you have read a long article of more than 5000 words with a lot of information. And, I’m sure that you haven’t got bored but rather excited to start your own e-commerce store.

Though you were reading this post with complete dedication, let me quickly recap the entire content to refresh your memory.

You have an idea of the product that you want to sell online.

Use the strategies like keyword analysis & market research to validate your idea and market demand.

Next, set up your online store through Online marketplaces, hosted or self-hosted platforms by evaluating the pros and cons of each. We selected self-hosted WordPress + WooCommerce.

Source the products depending on growth phase & investment capacity.

Promote your online store on different channels to get customers buying your products.

Deal with competition using different strategies like quality products, great service, VFM, etc. & stand out as a winner.

Get all legal formalities done like business registration & GST or any other legal certificate that require.

I hope that this is one of the articles you must be wanted to pursue your dream of building a career in e-commerce.

Now, it’s time to take action.

I’m not saying it would be an easy journey and definitely need some hard work and time. But, remember that “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”

If you don’t take action today, you will always wonder “Whether I could have made it big if I just tried.

[websitetipstricks-blog]

How To Add CloudFlare Free SSL To Your WordPress Website

The websites want to appear more professional & authentic are expected to run under HTTPS. And, for any site that uses a CMS (Content Management System), securing sensitive information like admin login credentials and user-submitted data should be the priority.

Nowadays, using HTTPS is a no-brainer because secure sites have an advantage in search engine ranking, even they are not handling sensitive data.

But, what’s the HTTPS?

You might have observed while browsing the internet that page URL starts with either HTTP or HTTPS. HTTP means Hypertext Transfer Protocol which controls the transmission of data over the web where HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure; a secured version of regular HTTP.

Adding HTTPS to your site have many advantages including those I have mentioned earlier in this article.

Now, you are thinking, if it’s a vital part of the website performance & SEO, then why not all people add HTTPS to their sites.

Am I right?

Your question is legit but historically, adding HTTPS to the websites to secure it required additional cost and the process of obtaining certificate was very complex.

But, you need not worry about that. Now, anyone can secure his/her site by paying zero to a few bucks for SSL certificate that offers encrypted data transfer to their site. And, the overall process is simply fool-proof.

I’m sure that you are excited to know how to get free SSL certificate.

But, here you have other bonuses too. You will get free CDN (content delivery network), performance booster along with many security features.

Do you know the best part of this?

This complete package is available for free. Thanks for CloudFlare’s concerted efforts for removing the barriers in protecting your site and helping to improve its performance.

This post will guide you to get a basic package from CloudFlare that provides all things required to secure your site. However, for better protection and extended features, you can get one of the premium plans.

Important: Let’s Encrypt is another free SSL certificate authority brought to you by the ISRG (Internet Security Research Group) but currently does not support all hosting services. You can ask your web host support whether they support Let’s Encrypt or not.

Adding CloudFlare Free SSL To Your WordPress Website

This starts with signing up a free account with CloudFlare and integrating all the required settings to receive the free SSL and other performance benefits.

Signing up for CloudFlare

To avail free SSL and CDN from CloudFlare, you need to have a site live on the web or one that is ready for launch.

The whole process for registration is simple. You only need to play with your email address where you can access your credentials and receive account related emails.

Signup here for CloudFlare.

When you register on CloudFlare at the first time, it directs you towards migrating your domain name. The user-friendly wizard of CloudFlare will help you when you move ahead and change it as your DNS provider.

It’ll scan your DNS configuration to detect DNS settings and allows you to update those settings just by changing your nameservers.

Updating Nameservers

Here, you’ll need to sign in your domain name registration account and change the default nameservers.

In the most cases, you will find this under Manage DNS setting of your domain name account. Set the option to custom nameservers and replace the default ones to those provided by CloudFlare. If you are not able to use custom nameservers, then try again after removing registrar lock or contact support team to guide you further.

Wait for some time to take effect after you make changes. It’ll take a few minutes, but you will not experience any downtime due to this process.

Finish the setup, and you can see the status of your site on CloudFlare dashboard as Active. Now, you have to play with a few options to get the maximum benefit of CloudFlare’s free plan.

Using CloudFlare’s Official WordPress Plugin

If you are using a WordPress website, CloudFlare has a free WP plugin to take advantage of their service.

Just install and activate the plugin and enter API key which is available at your CloudFlare account dashboard.

Go to WP Admin Dashboard > Plugins > Add New > CloudFlare and complete installation process. On activation of plugin, you can either signup for CloudFlare or log in to the existing account to get an API key.

Set the recommended options for security, performance, and speed. Make sure you have switched on the Automatic HTTPS Rewrites option from CloudFlare plugin settings.

However, don’t forget to set secure URL like https://abcd.com for WordPress address and Site address from your WP admin settings under the General tab.

Google treats http://abcd.com and https://abcd.com as different sites, so make sure you have submitted all versions of URL to webmasters tools and used proper redirects.

CloudFlare Free Plan Features

With a free plan of CloudFlare, you can get many useful features needed for the WordPress website. Here, I’m going to discuss as many of them on the go.

Overview

On this tab, you can check the status of your website, security level, and type of SSL certificate. You can also manage the subscriptions from here.

Analytics

Analytics feature of CloudFlare displays all stats at the single place where you can see the different performance and security related threads like web traffic, unique visitors, bandwidth and security threats. Geographical statistics are also available under Analytics tab.

DNS

Under DNS (Domain Name System) setting, you can add or change the DNS records. At the bottom, you can see the nameservers you have assigned.

CloudFlare allows CNAME flattening that follows a CNAME where points and return that IP address instead of CNAME record.

By default, it flattens the CNAME at the root of your domain only i.e. websitetipstricks.com in my case.

CNAME flattening helps in freeing you up from being tied to the single IP which is inherently risky, and it’s the only way to standardize on HTTPS with the root domain.

DNSSEC is another feature protects against the forged DNS answers.

Crypto

You can manage SSL certificates under Crypto tab. Different encryption and security options are available to configure on that page.

When you sign up for a free SSL at CloudFlare, select the recommended options here to get maximum protection for free.

Firewall

A firewall protects you against malicious attacks and CloudFlare does its job finely. You can switch various security options here also like rate limiting, access rules, etc. to set site’s security and allow access to specific IP addresses.

For advanced DDoS protection, you will need to upgrade to the business plan or higher.

Speed

CloudFlare gives free as well as paid features under speed menu. With the free plan, you have the option to auto minify different codes like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, etc. and speed enhancement features for mobile links.

Caching

Caching helps you serve contents from cache memory improving the speed of browsing thus user experience.

From the Caching menu, you can manage different caching options like purge cache, caching level, browser cache expiration, etc.

Page Rules

With page rules, you can control your CloudFlare settings by URL. For the free account, you have three page-rules available to trigger specific settings.

Network

Network menu has features to manage the network settings for your websites. It helps to improve the network efficiency.

Traffic

This menu helps in controlling and managing the traffic and reviewing the firewall events.

Customize

Under customize menu you can personalize the error and challenge pages that CloudFlare presents to your visitors. But, you need to upgrade for almost every plan.

Apps

From Apps menu, you can integrate different apps to your site. These apps include Google Analytics, Webmasters tools, and a few ads programs.

Scrape Shield

Scrape Shield helps you protecting contents on your site. You will get different options including Email Address Obfuscation protecting emails from spammers, server side excludes and hotlinking of static contents like images.

Testing Website Under HTTPS

Once you have completed with setup, try to load your site URL under HTTPS instead of HTTP making it the default mode to ensure the website’s functionality.

You can try loading site from multiple browsers and devices, browsing a number of pages and logging in, etc.

Initially, you need to wait for at least 24 hours to get SSL active, if you do not see one. You can use different tools like SSL checker to ensure SSL certification.

Step-By-Step Guide For Setting Up CloudFlare Free SSL

Create a self-hosted WordPress website and publish on the web.

Signup for free CloudFlare account with a valid email address and password. (No credit card required for free forever plan). You can log in if you have an existing account with CloudFlare.

At the dashboard, select Add Site option and place your site’s URL in there. Start scan to check DNS settings and at the next step add DNS record to run traffic over CloudFlare.

Select the suitable plan (Free in this case) according to the features you need.

Then, CloudFlare will give you nameservers to replace your default ones. Change your nameservers to the custom nameservers provided by CloudFlare and save the settings.

Finish the setup process and wait for 24 hours to the CloudFlare providing the free SSL.

Set the recommended options from your CloudFlare dashboard as well as WP admin.

Test site to verify whether is running under HTTPS or not otherwise recheck your settings.

Bonus Tip: Using W3 Total Cache with CloudFlare helps a lot in improving site speed and overall performance.

Summing Up

This was the complete process of settings up free SSL with CloudFlare which is enough for sites publishing the articles only.

Currently, CloudFlare is providing flexible SSL certificate for free that encrypts data transfer between user browser and CloudFlare server. The further travel of data is on HTTP only which is not encrypted.

With Full and Full (Strict) SSL, you can get the benefit of end-to-end encryption, but you’ll need to pay for a valid certificate.

But, make sure you are using an SSL from a trusted source if you have an e-commerce website or processing sensitive information on your site.

For premium SSL certificates, you can choose a good web host that provides free SSL like SiteGround or get one from a trusted source.

Stay Secure, Stay Safe!

[websitetipstricks-blog]

How To Move Your Local Business Online Successfully With A Tiny Budget

Are you running a successful business offline and want to grow it to a bigger? Or, you want to start a local business but online?Then, stay here, and I’ll tell you how to do that step-by-step.

You know, in the last few years, the number of smartphone users has increased tremendously. Today, more than half of world’s population have internet access.

If you are a local business using the traditional marketing strategies, then you might suffer from getting leads and sales many times.

Everyone want to grow his/her business but doesn’t have resources to complete with big brands.

Let take an example,

Suppose,

You are a famous restaurant in your local area, and people love your food items. You want to expand your business in other cities too but don’t have a big budget to buy or rent an outlet/shop.

What will you do?

Though there are some options like taking loan still, it becomes more expensive. That’s the problem with many small-scale businesses, and they fail to complete with big brands.

Don’t worry! Every problem comes with the solution.

If you are ready to take action, then I will tell you how to grow your business using digital marketing approach.

Many local businesses have one or more shops in a particular location. As a result, the reach and potential customers are limited. The outside people won’t visit those stores unless that city is either a tourist place or business hub.

Think about how much potential customers these businesses are losing?

Do you want to be one of them?

Definitely not, right?

So, you should move your traditional local business to the digital one. I call it transformation, isn’t it cool?

Now, It’s Time To Act

You have decided to move online but what next? The web has billions of pages so that how can your potential customers find you in that crowd?

It’s not something to start directly on digital strategies. You can’t shut down your existing venture to move online. When you think to opt for digital, it’s better to combine your traditional strategies with digital ones, till at least gearing up.

Here, I’m going to reveal some simple strategies where you can start and expand your local business to the big empire. So, leverage all things you have and make your business grow faster.

Understand The Buyer’s Persona

It’s the first and most important step in digital marketing. When you move your local business online, many things need to change accordingly.

Your marketing strategies and sales related services like transportation, payments and invoicing, CRM, etc. everything changes with business transformation.

So, you should change your perspective when you think about traffic, leads, and sales. Understand buyer’s persona and put yourself in the shoes of customers to find what you need to do.

I think you are not familiar with this term buyer’s persona. Let me keep it more simple so that you can understand it in the better way.

Buyer’s persona means finding the ideal customer profile. You can find the best if you have access to the market research data. The strongest persona can be decided after studying the market trends, surveys, and case studies. Interviewing influencers in your niche can give you some insights.

To create a buyer’s  persona, you must understand following five components.

1. Who

To create buyer’s persona, you need to understand the customer’s geographic, demographic and psychographic data. Then, you can decide your targeted audience.

2. What

The second step is defining what people want, their goals and challenges. You have to work on the pain areas of your potential customers. And, finally, decide what preferred solution you can offer them.

3. Why

Now, you have data about your targeted audience, their goals, problems, and estimated solution. So, you should think why people would buy from you and why not.

Find out the obstacles in your sales process. Learn ABCD of sales. It’s not something that you learned in pre-school, but it’s everything you must know to dominate your niche.

ABCD means acquiring leads, building rapport, closing leads into customers and delighting them. Just follow this strategy, and you will see the sales is growing up without investing too much.

4. How

Here, you should be aware of what you are doing. Make a plan how to offer the product or service to your potential customers or pitch them.

If you know their pain areas, then it would be easier to you to convince them to buy from you.

Consider, you are not alone offering the same service (in the most cases) so that knowing everything about your potential buyer prior making offer will help you better communicate with them.

5. When

Actually, it’s not mentioned in most of the marketing books but see how critical this is. You might think it’s the first step where you define the buyer’s persona.

But, I’m not talking about that. However, it’s the time when you should offer people a solution. And, remember one thing, if you fail here, your entire marketing strategy will fail.

Suppose,

You have an excellent solution for the problem your most potential customers are facing.

What will happen if you call them at midnight when they are sleeping?

Another one is email scheduling. If you haven’t scheduled an email for the right time, then most of the people won’t open it.

Negative Persona

There is another term called negative persona. It means those people whom you don’t want to include in your sales funnel.

The people who don’t want to buy from you, costly to acquire or retain, and unable to purchase your products and services due to deficiency of funds should exclude from your sales funnel. This is an unwanted customer profile you should exclude in your business.

Know The Buyer’s Journey

Buyer’s journey means how your potential customer move in your sales funnel.

The marketing process, where the stranger visiting your website reaches the destination of the delighted customer promoting your brand autonomously due to the value you have provided him is all about buyer’s journey.

The stranger visits your site, social media page and becomes a visitor. It means you are successfully attracting people and making them know about your business. The blogs, viral social media posts, etc. are great tools to attract people to your page.

If that visitor likes your content and products or services you are offering, he gets opt-in your list or calls for an inquiry. That’s the first place where conversion occurs, and you get leads.

The opt-in forms, highly optimized landing pages and contact details at prominent places play a major role in acquiring the leads.

The next step is when you close the sale, and a lead becomes your customer. This process may get long but nurturing lead through drip will increase your sales as never before.

Even, you want to make calls, be prepared with all required data and speak only essential things to get maximum chances of closing. Create a warm relationship with your customers and make them buy. Help in every step like payment, shipping, etc. if necessary.

The last but not least here is delighting customers so that they would promote your brand as a volunteer. Surveying & social outlook will help in understanding what people actually want from your products. Assist them in in every situation to get maximum value.

Resolve issues regarding the product or service with priority which makes you retain the existing customer base. It’s the step where the most local businesses fail and lose the market.

SWOT Analysis

I’m not going motivational here, but it’s all about essential points you should consider in your business. SWOT analysis is done to find out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for a particular person but here we are going to use this technique for the business.

What Are Your Strengths?

Whether you have a strong influence over the local market or not, you have some strong zones where you can beat competitors. Find out those strengths and leverage them properly.

According to the type of business, an experience in traditional market & popularity, quality of product or service, customer support, customer relationship, etc. anything could be your stronger zone.

Find & Eliminate Weaknesses

No one can claim to be perfect so that you don’t have to worry about the weaknesses you have. But, if you are not trying to reduce or eliminate them, then this approach can destroy your entire business empire.

Weaknesses can be simpler one to the very critical like not following time management. Set the priorities and remove every weakness.

Opportunities Never Wait For Anyone

It’s not just a quote. If you are not taking benefit of present conditions, then you are not only losing them but making available to your competitors.

You already have buyer’s persona, so that create potential opportunities. That’s the real skill of digital marketing.

List out the problems people are facing, preferred solution, which price is suitable for both of you, how much discount you can give, how much you can spend on the acquisition & retention, etc. And, once find out all things, think where you can beat competitors.

Sometimes, partnering with other brands provides positive results especially when you can’t complete them.

Find Potential Threats

Business can’t be passive, Am I right?

First of all, you need to be active as a business owner so that your team will also work enthusiastically. Not being so is the biggest threat to your business.

The competitors are actually making you active and pushing up so, don’t call them as a threat.

The loopholes in your sales funnel, negative feedbacks, constant decline in leads and sales are the threats for you. Stay ready before the problem starts knocking your door and kick them away. (Usually, opportunity knocks door).

Remember, SWOT analysis is a continuous process, and you should do it on every stage of the business.

Create A Platform To Sell

Once, you understand the buyer’s persona; next thing is to move your business actual digital form.

You can sell your products through online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, etc. The mobile apps, social media product pages like Facebook shop, Google Shop are other few option here.

Though many options are available here, creating a sales-ready website is a no-brainer. You can do it by using either hosted platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, etc. or self-hosted ones like WordPress, PrestaShop, Magneto, etc.

But, among all of them, self-hosted WordPress is really super when you want to create a website for a small local business. The flexibility and control that WordPress offers are simply amazing.

You can think about the mobile app and other things later once you have set up a website or you can say it as an online shop/office.

Still, it’s not everything to set and forget. Your website must be productive, fast loading and secure and optimized to give results.

You can get the simple one for only $5 on Fiverr or other cheap places. But, think twice before going there as the website is the most valuable asset of your digital presence.

I’m not saying cheap is always bad. But, you are wise to differentiate the quality of website created for $5 against that of $500-5000.

If you are serious about your business, then follow some guidelines mentioned here.

Guidelines For Creating A Website For The Local Business

The website is the second thing; your domain name should be memorable, short as much as possible and present your brand.

Make your site load within 3 seconds because if you fail to do that, half of your potential customers abandon your site immediately or maybe never come back.

The overall design matters a lot, don’t clutter your site. The headline, navigation, contents should be placed at appropriate places.

Add your phone number & business address in a prominent place. Moreover, the pages like Contact, Shop, About Us should be in header area which is most likely display when the page loads.

For local businesses, the mobile friendly website is simply no-nonsense. As more visitors come from a mobile device, make sure you have 100% mobile responsive website and working fine on any device & browser.

Images and videos make more impact on buying decision. So, consider adding relevant images and videos on your site. Use appropriate dimensions, quality, and placement for images. (See, my image optimization guide here).

If you are using video, don’t put it on auto-play mode which irritates most of the people. Instead, make the headline better and catchy so that people will open video themselves.

Though video marketing is trending in digital marketing, don’t upload videos directly on your site that can make site load slower.

Instead of that, use external services like YouTube, Vimeo or DailyMotion. It will also help you gaining more traffic.

Overall video length is another crucial factor for a marketing video. 75-120 seconds videos work better and if you have enough time, use other techniques like how-to video, tutorials, etc. which can help you get more inbound traffic.

Use clear & appropriate CTA (call-to-action) button/s. Make sure they are clickable on a mobile device too.

Don’t raise unnecessary opt-in pop-ups to get more subscribers for your newsletters. Use simple subscribe box and put into sidebar or footer so that only potential buyers will sign up for your list, not the garbage.

If you want more subscribers, then use opt-in forms on prominent places but don’t forget to give value. Today, people want instant value when they sign up to your list so think over it.

Let me give you an example.

Suppose,

You have a camera store, then give ebook like “10 Things You Should Consider Before Buying A DSLR” or “14 Camera Lens Setting Helped Me Getting Fine Tuned Shots”, etc. (Forgive me here as I’m neither a camera seller nor photographer).

For food stores and restaurants, you can give 20% off on instant booking or free home delivery in your city, etc.

The site security is another important thing you should not ignore. Use hack-proof themes, SSL and privacy guard so that the audience will feel safer browsing your site.

If you are processing payment on your site, then using HTTPS is simply a no-brainer. Or, you can use online payment gateways like CC Avenue, PayU, etc.

Focus on both on-page as well as off-page SEO.

Optimize pages effectively for conversion, especially the landing pages.

Remove distraction on landing pages and sales pages where the conversion has top priority.

Still, there are other points like adding pages like Privacy Policy, TOS, testimonials and integrating social media links, etc.

It’s no a final recommendation, think where you have a scope. Analyze your result (do A/B testing) and decide what is best working for you, though the best is subjective.

Promotion Of Your Business

You already have everything set up but what is the next? Unless people are not buying your products or services, nothing is beneficial. And, that’s why promotion is extremely necessary for any business.

The traditional marketing which uses newspaper or TV advertisement, frequent outbound calls, banners & hoardings require a big budget to spend on these elements.

But, the digital is very cost-effective compared to the traditional marketing. Using proper strategies and automation, you can promote your business to the maximum people spending a tiny budget.

Some of the digital marketing techniques like SEO, social media, content marketing are almost free but throwing a few bucks on paid advertising like SMM, Affiliate, or social media adverts can boost your traffic & leads instantly.

See, some effective local business promotion techniques and implement them for your business.

Search Engines

When people search for a particular keyword, search engines display the most relevant results to them. If you are optimizing your site properly, then more chances are to be found in search results organically.

Though getting results from SEO requires enough time, you need to be patient and the most important, you must have proper knowledge of SEO.

In simple, SEO is how you optimize the pages for both search engines as well as visitors. There are more than 200+ major factors affecting SEO process.

The bottom line,

SEO is an ongoing process so you can’t set and forget it if you want recurring organic traffic.

This is all about free but if you want to see quick results don’t mind spending on paid ads. The people who search for a keyword are the most likely to buy that product or service. Unlike traditional marketing, digital ads can be targeted to get positive ROI.

The Search or Display ads are effective to get leads and for brand awareness respectively. Search the term “SEM’ on Google, and you will get a ton of resources to work with search engine advertising.

Social Media

For the local businesses, the social media is a non-avoidable strategy. According to the business type, create accounts on relevant social media to promote your business there.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and WhatsApp are seven most preferred social media platforms for local businesses. Moreover, keep in mind that your most potential customers are using mobiles, so that optimize your strategies accordingly.

Still, this process is also slow unless you have viral content or large follower base.

So, using paid advertising on social media is another good option. Facebook & Instagram ads are the better options in brand awareness and lead generation. This is a cheaper option than SEM but make sure you are taking people out from social media environment to your website’s landing page.

For social media marketing, targeting audience is very important otherwise it will make a hole in your pocket without giving a single lead.

Giveaway is the best option if you are opting the social media adverts. You can bait something people want in exchange for an email or the social media shares.

Email Marketing

Do you know, every $1 spent on email marketing gives the ROI of $25?

Emailing people who have subscribed your list makes a huge impact on your marketing & sales. These people have given their email to opt-in your list so emails can boost the relationship,

If you use personalized campaigns, then it will help you in gaining huge publicity by word-of-mouth only.

While using emails for marketing purpose, focus on your open rate, CTR, and CVR. In case, you are not getting the good results, then use A/B testing with your subject line, email body, scheduling, landing page design, personalization, etc. and see what works great for you.

There is another option in email marketing called as cold emails which were previously considered as spam. Use this technique on your own because it’s risky and may lower down entire reputation in no time.

Using email automation features for lead nurturing and getting more revenue through upsells, cross-sells and down sells can be beneficial. This technique is called as drip marketing where you nurture your leads by giving small value every time and educating them about your business.

Initially, some free tools like MailChimp, MailerLite, and SendPulse are great options but when you grow up, invest a few bucks on automated email marketing.

Content Marketing

Traditional marketing is changing to be less effective over the time; as a forward thinker, you should know there has to a greater way.

And, that’s  content marketing.

It’s a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing the relevant and valuable contents on a consistent basis to attract and retain the targeted audience and ultimately drive them into your sales funnel.

More than 80% buyers research before making a purchase decision and about 60-90% are already aware of the brands where they buy products or services.

So, educating them about your business has not remained optional.

You can use content marketing here to increase brand awareness, brand preference and reach in lower cost. Before that, you must know buyer’s persona and buyer’s journey which I have explained earlier.

Instead of being salesy and pitching your products or services directly, provide truly helpful and relevant content to your prospects and buyers.

Blog posts, case studies, cheat sheets, infographics, ebooks, presentation slides, white papers, and videos are a few type of contents you can start using.

Strategically plan how to use these all things to get maximum leads and sales without spending a lot of budget on marketing. Due to inbound approach associated with content marketing, you can expect the maximum potential customers that need.

Remember, video marketing works great for local businesses, only you need be smart about what you are publishing.

Digital PR is another technique associated with content marketing where you have to integrate all digital elements like SEO, social media, emails in a stronger marketing weapon.

It has not remained the traditional press release only. Try to repurpose your content by putting value every time you share on any digital or traditional publication.

Finally, it’s all about maintaining a relationship with the audience. So, learn everything you need to implement successful PR strategy.

Business Listing

People mostly search directories to get to the local businesses so you must be visible there.

There’s no need to pay them to keep yourself on the top but for the competitive niche consider premium memberships.

For the merchants from India, Justdial, IndiaMART, Yellow Pages, Trade India, etc. are good options for business listing. Google Business is another powerful option for getting visible for local searches.

Listing on Google map will also helpful for people who are searching for local businesses using map features especially the smartphone users.

Find relevant other options that can help you boost the visibility of your business.

Other Promotional Strategies

There are some other techniques to get more focus toward your business.

Attending trade shows

Affiliate tie-ups

Sponsoring events or even small giveaways

Commenting & guest posting on other relevant blogs

Giving samples for testing purpose and asking for the review

Reaching to the influencers and interviewing them

Bonus tip

Leverage power of crowded online sources like Reddit, Quora, Advertising platforms, Job listing, and E-commerce platforms to increase your traffic.

Now, It’s Time To Sell Something

Everything mentioned about is for one & only ultimate goal of making a profit. Unless you sell something, there is no benefit of doing that all.

Here, you need to close leads into customers. Selling is easy for the services where physical products are not involved. But, for local restaurants, flower shops, and even a carpenters, there’s a lot of physical involvement like the traditional business. So, they should follow digital with traditional.

Suppose,

You have a famous pizza outlet; then you can get customer orders online and deliver pizza to their doorstep. All payments will be collected via PayPal, credit/debit cards or net banking and shipping will be in a traditional manner as home delivery.

You may continue with your existing outlet serving customers to enjoy their pizza.

The benefits of digital amazing. You will require fewer sales people & resources compared to traditional marketing as you already know who is your customer and what he wants.

And, the main advantage of digital sales is no geographical boundaries to sales process so making it least expensive.

Don’t you think so?

Sold Successfully, What’s Next?

Once, you get successful in sales, that’s not all. You must monitor the market for the performance of your products or services.

Your work does not complete with closing. The customer satisfaction is the most important part of your overall sales process. So, you should help customers even after you have sold the product or service.

To understand the performance of your business, ask customers to review and testimonials. The data from some review sites and social monitoring will help you here.

Try to get at least dozens of review for each product but never pay people for talking positively about your brand. However, invest those resources improving the quality of your products.

The conversation with customers will help you find the loopholes in your sales process. And, if you are doing well, don’t forget to ask people about testimonials. Place them on your site so that other people will also make a firm buying decision.

Solving customer queries with priority and helping them after sales will improve overall reputation of business. That will help you in building a stronger & popular brand.

Analytics Of Entire Sales Process

If you are not measuring your activities, then you may not know about how your digital strategies are working.

Only profit or loss is not a business, am I right?

So, start measuring results for your every action and find where you can improve. Right from getting the massive traffic to the repeated and consistent sales, all things can be measured and you have to.

Implement solutions immediately and if you are not confident, consider hiring an expert to work on your behalf or consult your team.

Summing Up

As digital works better than the traditional approach, consider success when you have great plans and proper implementation.

Learn everything required to grow your business and train your team too. It’s not something you learn today and start making huge revenue from tomorrow. It needs time and proper implementation.

If you follow the above techniques, I’m sure that you will see the difference in your sales & revenue.

Still, you want to know more about how to move local business online successfully, don’t hesitate to put your queries in the comment box below.

Have you any local business transformation? Share what strategies worked for you.

And, if you like this article, share it with your friends so that they can get benefit from it.

I write @ websitetipstricks.com

[websitetipstricks-blog]

Are You Joining An Affiliate Program? Here’s Something You Must Know!

Nowadays affiliate marketing is a common term in the blogosphere. The people who want to make a career in blogging or already doing it are fully aware of what affiliate marketing is.

Apart from the ads networks and selling own products, an affiliate marketing is a lucrative way to start making money online as the commission by promoting someone else’s products.

But, before signing up for any affiliate program, you must check the following points so that you can decide whether joining that affiliate program is really beneficial or not.

Will Affiliate Programs Help You Making Money Online?

The internet has evolved in the last few years, and many businesses are going online. When compared to the offline businesses, the rests which are powered digitally have more reach and potential to grow rapidly.

The affiliate promotion is good way advertising where merchant needs to pay only when lead or sale is generated. The publishers also get awesome benefits depending on performance.

But it’s not an easy task to succeed as an affiliate marketer. You must have knowledge of the products that you are promoting; you need to work on not only contents but promotion also.

Your promotion strategy must include the list of the targeted people who are interested in your products and services and want to buy or subscribe them.

Random advertising doesn’t work fine, and eventually, you’ll end up with nothing in your pocket.

As a blogger, I have learned a little that I want to share with you. Though many people are earning $1K-10K or even more like $20-100K from an affiliate marketing business, you must be aware of few things in affiliate marketing.

In this article, I have shared some of the loopholes in the affiliate marketing business.

Finding A Profitable Niche

If you are seriously thinking about starting an affiliate marketing business, then it would be better that you do some research before taking the initial step.

Many niches like SEO, web hosting, tech, blogging, weight loss, etc. have become saturated and competitive so that you’ll need to put more efforts and indefinite time to survive there.

If you a good referral network and only want to make a part-time income, then it seems fine continuing with competitive niches. But, to achieve the dream of multimillion dollar business, you must find something profitable where you can make adequate income and scale it over the time.

If you are unable to select the best one, you can take help from the article- How To Choose A Profitable Niche.

You can select a successful affiliate model from a less competitive niche and make it better for making money from it.

Otherwise, hiring a mentor is a good thing but consider the expenses involved in training. Many people who are just starting out have not enough money to spend on such things.

These people can avail free training through the web (consider us also) and some essential tools also. Still, a small investment in polishing your skills is not a big deal.

Here’s a practical oriented course to be a master in affiliate marketing.

Needs A Platform To Promote The Affiliate Products

What’s the stupid point? You might think so.

Every affiliate marketer needs a platform to promote the affiliate products and services. It may be a blog, social media page, a forum or a mobile app.

But, owning a website or blog is the best option when you think about affiliate marketing seriously. Unlike other platforms,  creating a website or blog is an easy way for affiliate promotion.

As most of the affiliate networks want the publisher should have his web property especially website (or an app which is not easy to maintain as a site).

You can use contextual links, affiliate banners or widgets as per your preference and have full control over them if you have a self-hosted website.

So, why not to create one?

It’s simple. Just buy domain + hosting,  install CMS (I prefer WordPress), build a full featured blog or website and start promoting the products and services.

You can create a free website with Blogger, WordPress.com, and Wix, etc. but self-hosted WordPress site has the edge over all of them.

If you don’t know how to do this, then I can create a stunning WordPress powered website for you. The best thing is that I won’t ask for a single penny from you.

So, don’t waste your time in thinking.

Let me create a beautiful site for you, and you need not pay me a dime.

Sources Of Traffic

Affiliate marketing is all about traffic. If you have the decent traffic and proper strategies or business model, then there are maximum chances of conversions.

It does not mean only the sites that have tons of traffic make more money. The quality of traffic is also similarly important.

You will need targeted traffic that wants to buy the particular product you are promoting. You should be a person (middle man) who helps them to find the right product or service.

SEO, SEM, SMM, etc. are few techniques in digital marketing will help you a lot in driving targeted traffic to your site. But, the search engine optimization (SEO) is the ultimate way to drive traffic to your site because it’s free method.

You need to work on some of the on-page SEO factors like keyword research and optimization, design, site speed, contents as well as the off-page SEO factors like link building, social bookmarking, etc.

Still, you can opt for PPC models at the beginning of your career to boost your site but not the compulsory if you don’t mind working on your site’s SEO and time involved in that.

Reputation Of The Affiliate Platform

You will find multiple ways to get into an affiliate business. You can join the in-house affiliate program or sign up for the affiliate marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, Cuelinks, etc.

If you ask your fellow bloggers or dig more into this, you will get several mixed reactions about affiliate marketing and the particular product or service. Every person interprets the quality of the product from his angles like the USP of that product or service, value for money, reliability, usability and overall experience about it.

Many people either do some fake positive reviews to achieve quick money through maximum sales or write only negatives to downgrade the reputation of competitors. They may be getting paid for that.

I’m not telling you to ignore this but at least keep such things out of your mind like making quick money by black hat methods.

What Should You Check?

Now from publisher’s side, you will find many people who are earning millions while others are not getting even $100 in their bank account. Some publishers may feel like the affiliate companies have cheated them.

I also know that more than 90% people don’t read affiliate terms and conditions completely facing troubles in the future like account suspension or termination, not getting paid, etc.

To avoid all these things, you must check the reputation of the affiliate programs before joining them.

You will find many affiliate programs especially new ones who only want to make money don’t mind few bad reviews.

Some quick rich schemes of MLM are promoted through independent affiliate marketing channels where they show incredibly luxurious lifestyle and tons of money within a very short time.

These things are not possible without using illegal ways or scamming. So, don’t get involved in such things or unfortunately you may end up with not getting paid.

Though you can join affiliate programs for free of cost, you need to push things harder to promote them. There is always a risk of getting paid for your efforts by such independent programs so that avoiding them is a better solution.

If you want to make money as an affiliate marketer, then play things safe by joining the reputed and trusted affiliate program or an affiliate marketplace. I’m saying this because as a beginner, $100 per month play a major role in continuing this career.

I have mentioned a few reputed affiliate marketplaces below that you can trust. You need not worry about your payments unless you are playing with the system against its guideline.

The affiliate programs/marketplaces You can Join

Amazon

ShareaSale

CJ Affiliates

Cuelinks

Flipkart

Rakuten Linkshare

The bottom line,

Join only those affiliate programs or marketplaces which are trusted for years and paying their publishers on time. The product or service quality, support are other few things you should take into consideration while selecting an affiliate program.

Don’t hesitate to ask the influencers in your niche, if you are not confident about a particular affiliate network.

Payout Method

You may think it’s not a big issue still you should check it by priority. Many companies give money or other things like gift vouchers, coupons, subscriptions, etc. as the commission for promoting their products and services.

There are many payment methods to redeem the affiliate commission, but online payment gateways and direct deposit are mostly used to receive the money in your bank account.

Using paper checks has now become an old fashion in this internet era.

It’s simple to understand, where is the real problem?

Yes, here’s the getting paid is a vital part of the affiliate business. If you have selected a payment mode which is not supported by your country or bank, then probably you will lose all your money made through the affiliate promotion.

Suppose,

I’m from India promoting an individual affiliate program based in the UK. The payment gateway they are providing supports only Euro, not INR (Rupees). It does not support the currency conversion too.

How would I get paid for my affiliate promotion?

This is just an example, and such things have happened to many publishers.

How To Keep Yourself Out Of This

If you don’t want to put yourself into trouble, then make sure the payment method supports your country and currency. Most of the companies are clear with their payment terms at least the reputed.

Still, you are facing the problem, then take help from your affiliate manager asking whether there is any alternative or not. Use the contact form or any other means like a phone call or email to get into helpdesk.

There are many payment methods popular among the affiliate marketers. Here, I have mentioned a few of them.

PayPal

Payoneer (Get $25 on sign up)

Direct Deposit/Bank Transfer (Get ready with the bank name, account number, IFSC/SWIFT code, etc.)

Paper Checks (Old method for online businesses still in use)

Minimum Payout

If you are a beginner and starting out the affiliate marketing business with a fewer traffic, then this point is important for you.

Most of the affiliate programs have set the minimum payment threshold like you will get paid once you reach $50.

Very few affiliate networks have minimum threshold less than $50. Cuelinks (INR 500) and Amazon.in (INR 1000) are the few examples here.

The rest affiliate networks pay only when you reach the minimum limit. So, it’s necessary to check the performance of affiliate publisher because many people having a blog or online publication join the affiliate programs and forget them after one or two sales.

If you haven’t reached the minimum threshold, then you will not get paid. It seems frustrating, and many people feel like cheated even after a few months they don’t reach the payout thresholds.

It’s marketer’s mistake that they forget to check minimum payout for an affiliate program they sign up.

It’s also important to focus on fewer things because you can give quality time to create more useful contents and promotional purpose. It will help you to reach that threshold quickly compared to random promotion for multiple programs in the same niche.

Affiliate Program Payment Withhold Period

Who would like to wait getting paid for the sleepless efforts involved in affiliate promotion?

Withhold period is the time interval to get paid after a successful conversion where you have involved in a promotion that generates the leads or sales.

It’s used to avoid scams, or fake affiliates who make benefit from the promotional sales features like 30-days money back guarantee or trials only, etc.

Generally, most of the companies have 30 days withhold period where some of them hold your payments for 90 days or even more.

Waiting for three months may be annoying especially when you are earning very less. The individual companies providing services have more withhold period compared to affiliate marketplaces and businesses selling physical products.

I have mentioned it because you may get in frustrated situation after the month end seeing nothing has credited in your account.

Cookie Length

To make money from your affiliate promotion, you promote a product or service on your blog or other allowed platforms.

When a visitor goes to the product page (landing page) of your affiliate merchant through your link and makes a purchase, then that visitor is tracked, and you get paid.

What about if the person only visited the landing page of your affiliate merchant but does not take action?

Here’s cookie length will help you a lot. But, before that understand what the cookie is.

It’s not something that we eat as snacks in free time. In the digital world, a cookie is a randomly generated unique identifier code associated with a particular user.

Most of the sites place a cookie in the user’s browser to track the behavior. The expiry duration of the cookie is set by the website owner like one day to 30 days or even more.

Are Cookies Really Helpful In Affiliate Marketing?

Now, what is the benefit of the cookie length in an affiliate marketing business?

When a visitor lands on product page through your link, his behavior is tracked in the cookie. And, if this person makes a purchase before the cookie expires, he is still supposed as a customer referred by you after a successful sale.

You will get maximum chances of getting paid with larger cookie duration. Still, consider factors like a last-click play that affect your affiliate commission.

Most of the times, people don’t make a purchase at the first time, and entire sales process takes around a few days after lead nurturing and proper follow up.

At that time, the cookie length plays an important role to get paid for your promotional efforts.

Isn’t it cool?

Well, it quite good to know that you will get paid even the sale is happening after several days later. But, all affiliate programs don’t offer the same cookie length.

Generally, the cookie expires after 30 days where some websites offer 45-180 days of cookie duration.

Hidden policies about all of this may lead to not getting paid even your referred person make a successful purchase.

Be aware of such networks which don’t have clear affiliate policies.

The another important thing,

You can also get paid for the cross-sales, up-sells and down sales for the people going through your referral links. Refer the guidelines or TOS of the particular affiliate program before signing up.

For the retail products, Amazon pays well for not only the direct sales but cross-sales, up-sells, and down sales also. You will get the commission for all the successful purchase your referral make that fit under Amazon’s TOS.

Content Creation

Crafting an engaging copy for an affiliate site seems a challenging task. These sites need to write mostly informative posts and reviews so that they can get more sales.

You’ll find a ton of sites reviewing the bestselling products. The information you want to use in your copy may be used by other people or very less (like description and features).

In such conditions, you need either buy that product or service or write by digging information on the web from other authority sources. (Some people may prefer writing fake or misleading people, but I don’t recommend that).

It’s also not possible to buy each product particularly when you are starting out. At that time you need to find the legit alternatives to get the product to write on it.

If you already master in a particular niche, then it may not be a problem for you. Otherwise, you can check following resources to create something out of the box.

How To Get Free Products From Amazon Writing Reviews

Become a Successful YouTube Product Reviewer

Time Required To Make The First Sale And Start Earning Consistently

It’s something many people forget who start affiliate marketing by keeping only money in their mind.

Though money is a major factor and almost every affiliate marketer wants to make more money, it should not be your priority when you are at the beginning stage.

The affiliate marketing is not a quick-rich scheme; you should focus on building traffic and more than that the relationship and trust with them.

To get more traffic, you need to learn SEO, link building, SMM, etc. and evolve as a successful affiliate marketer; it takes around six months to 1 year.

Some people are lucky who get instant success, especially who already have huge fans following. But, it’s rare, and rest should focus on the specific strategies to reduce this time before starting to get paid.

The coaching from the influencers who dominate this industry can unlock the doors of success if you are dedicated to your goal.

Summing Up

Yeah! These are some of the critical points where you must look before joining any affiliate program.

By ensuring you have followed this simple guideline, you won’t get scammed or cheated.

You can receive your commission on time and if it’s not happening contact your affiliate manager immediately for further interactions. However, the chances are less as you know some valuable insights or loopholes in the affiliate marketing.

Are you an affiliate marketer? What are the other things you usually check when signing up an individual affiliate program or the marketplace?

Have you ever fallen in a scam or cheated by an affiliate company? Which one is that?

Or, anything specific to mention here you can share with us. It will help other people not get fooled by the affiliate networks in the future.

If you have liked this post, don’t forget to share with your friends.

Originally posted on www.websitetipstricks.com

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[websitetipstricks-blog]

51 Common Mistakes Freelancers Make And How To Avoid Them Easily

Do you want to become a freelancer or have already started this career and want to know insights?

Here I’m going to tell you 51 common mistakes that freelancers make and probably, you also.

If you want to increase your productivity, profit and develop a career as a successful freelancer, then these mistakes you should avoid at any cost.

The mistakes that freelancers make are not examining the fundamental qualities of themselves and ignoring the things that can ruin the life forever.

I have tried to find out most of the mistakes freelancers make and have grouped them in appropriate category so that one can easily focus on his weak point and improve accordingly.

There are many mistakes that I had made in my past, but luckily I could get out of that. It’s not possible in every situation so being aware of them is a preventive measure.

After reading this article, you can easily find out which mistakes you are currently making and how to avoid them.

A) Not Focusing On SWOT Analysis

It’s a major step because here you are going to start your freelancing career. If you fail to examine your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), then the most probably you would be failed.

And, it’s not that difficult or complicated you might think. Just by observing your capabilities and weaknesses, you can easily do your SWOT analysis.

I’m not going deep in personal development theories, but it’s what you need to look for.

1. Not Investing In Yourself

It is the most common mistake freelancers make and I’m also one of them. Trust me; it may cost you very big.

Ask one question to yourself, why the people will give you their projects.

To work as a freelancer, you need to be skillful and highly knowledgeable. I’m not saying to be a generalist but a specialist.

The most common approach among the freelancers, especially the newbies is becoming a jack of all trades but the master of none. It will not only restrict from becoming successful but also results in paying very less than others doing the same job. It happens because you are not showing your expertise and only want to work for getting money.

Never make this mistake again.

Suppose, you are a freelance writer, invest in improving grammar, vocabulary and when you master it, go ahead on literature or books in your niche where you can find the good references for your copy.

Another one example,

If you are an SEO specialist, then try to improve your knowledge every day because you will find the updates in this industry and know that the SEO is an ongoing process.

You can get the knowledge from the web, like articles, videos, presentations & ebooks or through offline books. You can also hire a trainer/mentor or join the training classes where you will get extra wings to your strengths.

2. Not Working On Own Projects

I have seen this many times that working on the own project will give you more power than what you learn in theory.

Work gives a clear picture of our strengths, the actual time required to complete the project, total project cost estimation (the most vital part of freelancing career).

Not working on the own project would backfire you if you get a big project and fail to complete it due to poor planning or inadequate knowledge & skills required for that.

If you have worked with your project(s), it helps in negotiating with the client and make them feel you are really expert & have all skills to complete that particular task.

3. Treating Freelancing Career As A Hobby

Though you have started the freelancing career due to your interest in the particular field, like copywriting, marketing, graphics design, etc. but once you start getting clients, treating your freelancing career as a hobby will not make you successful. Moreover, you should not expose yourself as a freelancer, but a businessman and behave like that.

Let me clear; I’m not saying this all about your interest or enjoying the work. It’s necessary to work on projects what you like but that all should be to bound to time and other aspects.

You must be professional rather than a hobbyist. This work is going to pay you in money and reputation helping to get more projects in upcoming days.

So, make sure you are giving quality through your work.

4. Sharing Just Words Not Work

Communicating with the clients may award you more leads but remember, only dry emails won’t work always.

Show your customer that which project you are handling and what value you are giving to that. No matter whether the project is a small or a big one.

Sharing your sample work, or a link to your project would give you more exposure and credibility.

It will not only help you to award that project but pitch more.

5. Not Building A Portfolio

Why would the people trust you for offering their valuable projects? Many freelancers are having same or better skills than you and why they award you the particular project?

Isn’t this a common question?

Any client may ask you about your portfolio, and you must have one to showcase your expertise. So, build a professional looking portfolio like a CV.

It’s better to have a professional looking website as a portfolio which is trending now. You can give a link to your clients and prove them how you are one the best.

Including a blog on your website has its own perks and do not hesitate to write something that you know very well.

It’ll add trust, credibility and increase chances to get more leads or projects.

If you want to build a professional website for your portfolio, then using a premium template and unique, but the attractive design will make the clients give more weight to your bids.

If you are not sure about this, you can try yourself on the freelance marketplaces for this point.

In case, you don’t have a sound knowledge of web design, hire someone to help you. You can get one professional looking site for a few bucks.

6. Not Updating Portfolio

In above point, we saw how much importance goes to the building a professional looking portfolio. But, it’s not something to set & forget. You Need to update your portfolio regularly.

Adding the latest project can build more credibility & trust among your clients, and you can easily pitch more value to your freelance work.

Once you have a sufficient number of projects under completed status, then pick & add only the best projects in your portfolio.

I’m sure that you will continue learning even after setting up your career & brand. So, you can easily add more skills in your portfolio.

If you are not focusing here, then clients may ignore you quickly even you are the most talented person to complete his project.

7. You Don’t Like To Be Professional In Your Freelance Business

Almost every freelancer follows his hobby & dreams before entering in freelancing. I mean, hobby makes people attract towards becoming a freelancer.

But, when you decide to work as a freelancer, it becomes your profession, and you need to behave like a professional, not a hobbyist.

Hobby is something that you do in a spare time where you don’t have any bosses. You are not accountable to anyone. If you don’t like anything, you can easily deny that particular work, and there is nothing to lose except your interest.

In a case, you are following the same rule for your freelance business; then you might be wrong. Here, you are accountable to yourself, and if you treat your freelance business casually, then the growth of business may lower down significantly.

Especially, when you are dealing with the big clients having a reputation in the market or focused on overall quality of the project, you need to be complete professional in everything from communication to payment invoicing.

I’m sure that you will not lose such awesome deals for the silly mistakes. Am I right?

8. Not Respecting Yourself

Why are you doing the job or the freelance business? Is it for money, healthy & wealthy life, for your future, life partner & kids?

Yes, you are doing freelancing for all that but where are you among these points? You also have a life & you need your space.

After a burden of the work & all related things, you must keep some time for yourself. Always remember that you are the central point of all these things.

So, respect yourself and love yourself.

9. Only Work Has Priorities Not For Your Personal Life

In the last point, you saw, how much you are important. So, you must prioritize your work accordingly.

Apart from priorities for projects, you should enjoy your life. Adequate sleep, proper exercise, and healthy food are something that you never forget. Scheduling the personal life is similarly important as you work.

You need not work all the seven days of the week. Be faster on the other six days and enjoy at least one day forgetting all the jobs. 1-day picnic to the nearest tourist spot with your family may bring you the joy which you can’t get through your work.

Taking break may refresh you and give a boost to start the new week with more positive energy & enthusiasm.

10. Not Learning New Skills

Yeah! You have seen the right.

You may think, you are the master of a particular skill and teach others about that, then why you need to learn the new skills. Right?

Yes! You need to learn new skills because learning is a continuous process. Every person is a student for his entire life.

In the online world, things change very rapidly, and you must update yourself with the current technology.

Take a simple example;

You might use the Windows XP, but now you are using the Windows 10 or something latest version.

Why did you move forward & grab the latest one?

It’s because if you use the previous technology, no one will count you or offer a job.

The same thing happens in freelancing business. Apart from your work schedule & personal life, you should spend time on upgrading your skills.

You can go for live training or use the internet to learn new skills. In critical case, you may hire a mentor if you can afford. Finally, practicing has no option. To master a new skill, you must learn it & practice thoroughly on a regular basis.

B) Mistakes In Communicating With Clients

It is something where you meet & interact with clients and pitch them to offer you the projects. Strong communication heartline of freelancing career and works as connecting you with your clients either online or offline.

Mistakes in communication may destroy all your business reputation overnight, and you would lose all your money.

Grabbing the new leads & converting them into customers, educating them about the project to pitch maximum value and finally making repeated customers or establishing a network of referrals, all require a proper & professional but engaging conversation.

In this section, you can get the ideas about the importance of communication & what mistakes freelancers make here.

11. You Are Too Busy To Get Calls

Many people show that they are too busy and can’t get calls. It may be a real situation for a qualified freelancer, but others may be doing this to exaggerate that they are very reputed & have a ton of workload to pitch more.

It may work in a few case, but if there is a big opportunity opposite, you will lose that client. At least try to attend him & listen to his proposal. You may get benefited largely from such projects or in the best case; it would be a breakthrough for you.

Suppose,

I’m a web developer and deliver work in 5-7 days according to project need & charge min. $200 per project for a static website.

One day I get a call and client ask me to develop a one-page site for $100 with the free theme & stock images. It takes me only 5-6 hours to create an excellent website & costs around $20. It means I can make $80 profit in my spare time. If I can do that, why not to do that?

It will add more revenue to my monthly income when I have the limited projects at that time.

Being too busy to get calls from clients is a bad sign of professionalism. Reject the offer if you don’t like, but at least show respect and courtesy to your customers even you have become successful.

It doesn’t mean you should accept each & every proposal. You can screen clients according to your business needs which we discuss in the upcoming point.

12. Making Mistakes In Emails Not Only While Reading But Writing Also

Email has become the strongest medium to communicate for B2B and B2C. You must have careful while reading the proposal i.e. terms & conditions, special instructions regarding the project and other important things that you must know.

Not only while reading but when you are writing an email, then you should be more careful. Having a separate email account for your freelance business may add advantage here, and chances of missing emails and mix-ups will reduce significantly.

If you are a big firm or heading a group of freelancers where you have hired someone for communication purpose, then be more careful and look for emails every day personally to ensure the person is working efficiently or not.

13. Making Weak Contracts

It’s a common approach for new freelancers to make poor contracts not only by money but terms & conditions also.

For short term project or initially to boost your career, accepting the possible project may be beneficial to build a portfolio but for a long-term contract and especially when you have become stable it may cost you a big.

At the time of signing the contract, make sure that it’s a win-win situation for both of you i.e. value for money at client side and also the value of your skills & work.

14. You Are Weak In Negotiation

When you work in the freelance marketplace, you set your rates for a specific type of work, like 500 words article writing for $25, etc. Sometimes, you can bid on a particular project and client awards a person who thinks capable of doing that work.

When you become more popular and build a reputation, you can raise your rates, but at a big project, you may need to negotiate with a client for a better deal.

Every client wants to get work done in a qualitative manner but the minimum possible budget. So, negotiating with such clients is also a necessary part of your job. Negotiation is an art, and you should learn how to pitch a customer to create a beneficial situation to yours.

Being weak in negotiation may lead you to work at very low cost, and finally, you’ll get a small amount to spend on your expenditures.

15. Failing To Educate Your Clients

As I said in the previous point, negotiation is a vital part of your freelance contract. Educating clients may improve your chances of the betterment of deal.

Clients only think about his project and estimate the cost. He wants to pay the cost based on front-end work, not the back-end. You should tell all the scenario so that he can happily hire you for his project.

Suppose,

You are a freelance web developer and got a project for a website design of a restaurant. How would you educate & negotiate with your client if he is saying to complete the project in $100?

Most of the people may think, it’s an excellent deal to build a website for $100 where many people are developing a website for $5 on Fiverr.

Am I right?

But, how to pitch a client to pay you more than $100 by educating him?

Let’s see the complete process (which I prefer).

First of all, send an email with thanks for offering you the project and nothing else.

On the next day, ask his requirement, everything in detail so that you can design project in a better way.

Sometimes, the client may forget a few required details where you can show your expertise by asking about that particular point that client may have ignored.

Now, the main part is the cost of the project. Tell your client about how much a premium theme & plugins cost. The graphical part is another thing. You may find here is the cost of project going beyond $100, then about your charges and why that. As you have to spend on your salary (though you are a freelancer), office rents, phone & electricity bills, internet charges, salary for the other freelancers in your team, taxes you need to pay, etc. all.

And, finally, tell him how you are unique or distinct from the other freelancers who work for $5.

If you educate, your client about his needs and how overall project will cost in such humble way, the most probably you will get the project. It’s not only due to your expertise or skills but due to communicating & educating your client.

16. Over Sharing The Unnecessary Things

I have discussed what the importance of educating the customers in the last point is. You should know about their requirement and provide a solution for that.

But, same time sharing the unnecessary things or over sharing may backfire you. Only tell those things which are necessary & relevant to your project.

If you try to overshare anything and client catch you, the chance of doing project may end up with the frustration. Or, the client may award his project for another company the best suited for his needs according to your suggestions.

Be aware that you are not losing project for especially upsells & cross-sells.

17. Pulling Unnecessary Threads In Communication

When you communicate with a potential customer or a person who have already deal with you, engage only in a professional tone, not in friendly one, though, it’s your repeated customer or a close friend.

Talk only about the project when you open thread about your work. Putting unnecessary threads in conversation may diverse your main topic and end with a weak contract.

If someone doesn’t like your approach, you may even lose the project in the worst case.

In the mail of project details, you should only talk about project requirement and relevant things and not about your portfolio because you have already got the project.

In a case, the client is negotiating with payments then you may open the another thread, but till then, the conversation must be streamlined.

18. Overpromising

You may have seen the poor reviews for a particular freelancer on a freelance marketplace. Why does this happen?

It’s because of overpromising or something you are not able to deliver.

Suppose,

You don’t know Photoshop or other graphics design suits, how would you make PSD templates?

Another one example, if you can’t write the article more than 1000 for a particular topic, then why are you bidding on 3000+ words elite article writing gig?

Make all efforts to get the project you can complete & deliver within time, but same time everything is not for you so, never overpromise anyone only to get the job.

19. Not Asking For Referrals/Testimonials

Actually, it’s a part of the customer acquisition strategy but similarly important during communication.

When you complete the project before the deadline with desired quality, the client gives you 5-star rating or at least four stars & above. If you would be successful to satisfy the client with your work, then send him another email and ask for testimonials or other projects if he has.

Asking pro-actively about more project may give you other similar project or the satisfied customer may provide the reference for his network.

Don’t ask desperately showing you are needy but pitch in such way that you are capable of delivering the better results.

20. Not Taking Proper Follow-up

Actually, follow up is a powerful digital marketing technique and you must use in your freelancing business.

Right from collecting lead in a traditional way or advanced marketing techniques, you should focus on nurturing every single lead to convert into a customer. Not only a client but a satisfied & delighted customer.

Nowadays, you can use email marketing tools automation to help you in that work, and these tools save your tons of time once integrated properly.

Initially, it may cost you few bucks, but when you scale your business, the email automation will become an ultimate tool to help you.

For the prospects having a high value, you can handle on a priority basis or a look personally without relying on automated tools.

This type of communication will build a long term relationship and costs a very less.

21. Not Interacting With Your Followers

You can build your follower base with fast pace online rather than the traditional way. You may have seen this for social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Google+, etc.

And, it’s same for the business account also. You would have thousands of followers but not interacting with them is not a right approach. Your fans expect something new for them or want you to share your experience & knowledge. Answering their queries and emails make them happy, and they take responsibility for your promotion.

Suppose, I like a person ABCD having expertise in copywriting and he answers my queries satisfactorily about writing an engaging copy. In a case, one of my friends asks me about the good online tutor in copywriting, which reference would I give to him?

It’s just one example. So, not interacting with your followers on a regular basis may give you a little value than your potential.

I interact with my followers, especially the prospects and you should also spare a few minutes daily to connect with your network, at least the professional one.

C) Time Management

I’m not a time management expert or a mentor giving you a dose of punctuality. You will find many so called Gurus and books to manage your time.

Here, I will tell you some of the mistakes that I was making and cost me my productive time & money both for the silly reasons. One of them is surfing the internet while doing work. It does not only cost me 10 minutes but 4-5 hours sometimes as I am avid internet surfer. You are feeling same like mine, aren’t you?

Let’s see a few common mistakes freelancer make in time management.

22. Failing To Follow The Deadline

Once you get awarded with the project, the client wants the gig delivery on time or before. So, estimating and planning work according to that is very important here.

If you are giving more value to the project, then you may ask the extra time to work on that specific requirement. Before promising someone about delivery time, make sure you have a properly planned calendar, appropriate workload or team to share your work. In the extreme cases, you may outsource the basic things and edit after you get back to you.

Most of the people are very particular with timely delivery and if you fail to follow deadline, then leave bad reviews or may cancel the project without any payment.

There are many small things like a problem with internet or electricity, etc. may lead canceling the project, especially when you don’t have alternatives.

So, set all up before starting to get projects and complete them before the deadline.

23. Not Have Work Calendar

To save yourself from the deadline problems or canceling good project due to deficiency of time you can opt for a work schedule, and you can manage your work with the ease.

When you get a project, decide the time require to complete that project and mark on your calendar. Similarly, follow the process for all days. But, make sure you are a living being and have a personal life which we have discussed earlier.

Work calendar will help you to identify your needs like which project to grab so that you get more value or ROI from your job.

Two projects per week with $500 profit per project and following the calendar can bring you a huge sum of $4K per month.

I know that it’s not possible for every freelancer, but once you got reputation & top level expertise, you can easily cross this mark.

Remember one thing, Respect the time, time will respect you!

I was making the same mistake for a long time, and recently I get to know about this. Now, I have understood what the importance of work calendar is, and that’s why I have prepared my work schedule.

24. Don’t Have Idea About Estimated Project Time

Having no idea about the estimated project completion time is the fundamental cause for failing to deliver the project before the deadline. It may happen due to lack of adequate knowledge of that particular subject or the required skills.

We have discussed this point earlier but mainly time requirement for research to actual work may differ from person to person, and you must calculate your time required for completion of the project.

If you are capable of doing the best, then the client may give you extra time to complete the project. You should tell that before starting the project.

Generally, the poor speed is not preferable, but if you are successfully convincing the client or educating about the scope of that particular project, you may get more than estimated time. Still, try to complete the project before deadline & keep extra time as grace for the worst conditions.

25. Not Giving Time To Improve Your Skills

It’s another instance where time management is essential and similarly your interest also. Spending time to improve your skills and upgrading knowledge is a part of your work that you can’t ignore.

Only working with project gives you experience and boost your speed but what about the updates in that particular field. Learning new skills is an important step in the freelancing business but working on improving the current skills has its own perks.

It not only boost your authority but the revenue also. An experienced and highly skilled person or an elite class freelancer may charge a huge sum, and people pay them.

Reaching this step is not that easy and here time management can help you.

26. Saying ‘Yes’ For Every Single Project Though, It’s A Crap

It’s another common mistake freelancers make. There is no need to say ‘Yes’ for every single project. Take work according to your capabilities and ask yourself whether you can complete all projects on time or not.

Though it’s not worth their skill and expertise level, most of the people work on every project they get.

Remember, working on a couple of quality project paying your $500 is better than cluttering your work calendar for 50 small projects worth $10.

Don’t you think so?

Instead of getting tired with a lot of workloads, only close a few jobs paying satisfactory and spend quality time on those specific projects. It will spare more time for your personal life or improve yourself as well as pay more than working on tons of crap projects.

Freelance work is not a boring job that you used to do while in your office. Showing your talent & creativity is the real freelance business.

And, never forget one thing, Quality always has a demand.

27. Not Delegating Work

Have you become successful and want to scale your business to the next level? You might be thinking about how to complete all the project and maintain the credibility.

Don’t worry! You are not alone here if you don’t have a problem with working in a team. Otherwise, I can only predict about scaling your business.

Once you start getting pickup and want to scale business, it’s better to hire someone to work for you. You may even outsource some of your jobs and only work on final edits.

Delegating work among your team members or employees whom you have hired can be more beneficial.

No one becomes successful without leveraging the others efforts. So, don’t hesitate to delegate your work. Only look whether the professionals have capabilities and interest in working with you or not and will they give the desired output, etc.

28. You Are Little Available To Clients

When a client offers you a project, he wants to communicate with you to discuss a few essential things. Initially, it’s fine to interact with them but wasting time only on chatting instead of productive work is beneficial.

I’m sure that you have thought the same.

Spending more time on the productive work is a good thing but ignoring client’s emails or call and being a little available to him may not always good.

It may hurt his ego, and you will lose the project or future deals.

Before getting the project or even after that try to build a positive relationship with your clients and complete all the required communication process as soon as possible.

Don’t let people eat your time and tell about that in very kind words. In a case of clients want to know the project status, then it’s an easy task where you should not compromise the entire project for a single call.

I have seen that a reputable freelance business has less communication about the unnecessary things and better service quality. You can follow that also.

29. Not Getting Mails Quickly To Show You Are Busy

Always keep in mind that quicker is the better, especially when you are a freelancer. In your business time, you should be available within a few minutes after getting mail in your inbox.

Nowadays, live chat has become more popular for instant messaging, and even when you are working on a particular project, you can answer your clients on the go. Just integrate the live chat service to your website and start talking with your customers without too much interference.

If you are not getting the emails quickly only to show you are busy, then you may miss a golden opportunity residing in your mailbox for a limited time.

30. Don’t Have Goals

It’s different than other points mentioned here still, relevant to the time management required in the freelance business.

Deciding goals and following them should be a part of your business. Without goals, you can’t achieve growth that you expect. It’s not necessary to have big goals like $5K per month after two months stating the freelance business.

Be practical & realistic. First of all, keep the small goals and try to complete them with a deadline and then scale your goals. These all things should be relevant to your business and niche.

If you are focused & working honestly to complete the goals, then you can easily scale your business and generate a large sum from your freelance work.

D) Customer Acquisition

You have definitely heard most of the times that customer is God, and it’s same here in freelance business also.

To acquire more leads and clients, you should work on the customer acquisition strategies. While trying to get more customers, some freelancers can make the silly mistakes which I have mentioned here.

31. Not Screening Clients

If there is an important exam, then a screening test is conducted to eliminate the incapable candidates to ensure the great results.

The same formula is applicable in freelancing. Once you start getting popularity, you would be one with tons of clients want to work on their projects.

But, you should not take every project. Screen the clients and work only with the few desired of them.

Find the best deals for your skills and say ‘No’ to the rest of them. Not screening clients may result in weak contracts or not getting paid by at least of them.

32. Leaving Unhappy Clients Side

Every person has not similar thinking. When a person offers you a freelance job, he wants to work only as per his instructions, and you should do that. Sometimes, you need to be practical, and the terms get a little compromised.

The client does not know what is happening back-end and criticizes you that you are not good. In such conditions, you need to work for satisfying the unhappy clients though it’s not your mistake.

You may need to work the extra hours without getting paid, but it’s worthwhile to intact your business reputation.

Unhappy clients generally put bad reviews and one or two-star ratings. That may cost you more than working for a couple of extra hours to complete the project as a client wants.

33. Not Connecting Former Clients & Employees

The client is not someone who arrives once and disappears forever. If you are not connecting with the people with whom you have done projects and your former staff, then you are making a big mistake.

The satisfied clients or your previous staff who have left your firm can give you many leads if you are connected with them. Never forget them as a client/employees or a person.

Word of mouth can give you better lead than any other marketing techniques because of trust.

Spare some time for this work to connect with those people on social media or by email. Still, being professional is good on the business matter otherwise, you may need to work for less amount due to excess friendliness.

34. You Are Thinking Client Is Always Right

It’s the biggest mistake if you are reputed freelancer and featuring in client’s project. Sometimes, people don’t know exactly how the process works for a particular job and make a general overview about it. But, internally the scenario is different.

In a case, your client is saying to do, and it’s wrong, let him know that he is making a mistake instead of continuing the project. You may think why to interfere with their needs, but when someone criticizes the live project, the blame would be redirected toward you eating your reputation.

When you sign a project, find the loop holes and tell the client about these irrelevant things. And, when you know complete picture and confident enough stay firm on your decision even client cancels the project.

I’m sure you never want to bear problems arising in the future for the silly mistakes at front-end, and especially that you have not made.

35. You Are Little Available To Your Clients

It’s again common mistake freelancers make while working on a particular project. For the small projects, there is a restriction of time, and fair communication is fine.

But, if you are working on a big project and/or has a long term contract, you should be available to your clients for every time, and in case it’s not possible, try to connect as early as possible.

The requirements of client or scope of the project may change for the long term project, and you may get extended work which is beneficial to you. The client’s requirements may changes especially for the dynamic projects and being available may add more credibility to your account.

Though it’s interference, you can use live chat features on your workstation for managing your time and work in the better way.

Yeah! It’s all necessary. Still, try to keep your phone away while working to achieve better productivity and focus only on the work.

36. Not Explaining Work Process

The Freelancing is very easy & simple is the most common approach among the people. They think freelancing is only a part-time job which is done by adding some extra money to the monthly income.

Is it true? Absolutely not.

Freelancing is a full-fledged business and increasing day by day. It’s said that 40% of the total population of US would be in freelancing or working on similar contracts jobs by 2020.

Now, come to the point why I said that or what it has relation here.

Yes! I have explained this because many people don’t know the potential of freelancing. Telling them about the freelancing and complete work process is essential otherwise, they can start negotiating on useless points eating your time.

37. Not Working To Grab New Clients

It’s good to work with the trusted clients or on the long-term projects due to reliability factor. Still, you must focus on grabbing the new loyal customers to expand your business.

You need not work a lot if you provide the quality through your previous gigs. There are many free as well as paid techniques to grab new customers.

38. Telling Your Client That You’re Only Genius Left On The Planet

Most of the freelancers are highly qualified and skilled in the field they have chosen. Not only education but the experience are their strong points. Still, no one is perfect and should not exaggerate about the skills, though he/she knows everything about that particular field.

If the opposite person knows the subject in a better way, then you may face a problem there.

39. Putting All Eggs In The Same Basket

Suppose, a company has signed a contract with you to deliver them monthly 15 gigs under a particular project. You are doing the work due to the long-term contract and job security.

What would happen if the company cancel the contract for some reasons or decide to go with the another freelancer? You will have to work for searching and grabbing the new clients. If you have the single or a couple of clients only, then it would be very disappointing and frustrating to get new customers and make a strong comeback.

So, never rely on a single source of income working for all your project. Though you have found the eye-catching deal, don’t put all eggs in the same basket. Alternative sources of income or working with the number of clients same time is beneficial here, and you will get the wide experience of work also.

Diversify or divide your income sources among all of your clients rather than depending on one of the lucrative offers.

40. Not Promoting Your Work

Promotion is a part of customer acquisition, and you should not ignore it. Promotion can be done by various ways like social media marketing, guest posts on renown portals, referrals or word-of-mouth and some paid advertising methods, etc.

Using integrated digital marketing techniques can give a tremendous boost to your business, and it’s one of the trending methods of promotion nowadays.

Creating a website and writing the blog is one of the best technique not only to get customers but build the authority also.

According to Hubspot, the business having a blog and 16+ posts per month have 350% more traffic & 450% more inbound leads than that of publishing 0-4 blog posts per month.

The blog is an effective medium to reach all of your followers and others interested in your work. It can save a lot of time and same time helps you to get more leads.

E) Financial Operations

No matter what is your role or industry, money is the motive of freelance work for almost every person, and it should be.

But, ignoring the simple things may cost you very big, and in the worst situation, you may end up with not getting paid.

So, carefully read this section and decide your strategies to get benefited from your hard work.

41. Not Giving Value To Your Freelance Income

You have started your freelancing career as a hobby, and now it has become a business paying for your livelihood. So, it’s your responsibility to giving value to your business and revenue generated from it.

In a case, you are a full-time freelancer; you should be more careful. Right from money incoming to your account to the expenses and profit at the end of the month is one important thing that you should look for personally.

42. Spending Everything

It’s another common mistake freelancers make because freelancing is a career where you have less job security though you have many long-term contracts. It’s not an ordinary 9-6 job where you know that you will get a paycheck at the end of the month.

So, spending everything is not a good habit. There are a few expenses where you should not compromise like a cost involved in training, polishing your skills, new amenities & technology, and marketing budget.

Other things where you can save money and not having any potential benefit should be avoided. I would not recommend you a specific amount, but you should save at least 25-30% of your monthly profit as a reserve.

In case, you would not get any job for a couple of months or something happen where you can’t work; then this amount will help you spend your overheads without any tensions.

43. Not Charging Enough

To get a close overview, please visit the popular freelance marketplace- Fiverr. You will get tons of freelancers working in different industries only for $5.

Actually, I was thinking it’s a good source of income by using a simple rule of Maths.

According to my opinion at that time, only two basic gigs per day for 25 days per month would give me $250. It was more than my stipend when I joined the industry.

But, I was wrong there. Working for a little value when you have quality is a sign of the foolish person.

I realize that I can charge $250 or even more for a single project where I have to work for 3-5 days. I can screen clients according to my choice. So, why to work for $250 per month putting all my time & efforts.

Remember, the quality always has a demand as I said earlier. So, never hesitate to charge sufficient depending on your skills and project needs.

44. Letting Clients Dictate Your Rates

It’s another mistake that I had made in my past. I was very casual about my project and only wanted to get the job.

Luckily, the client told me to send reasonable quotes for my service, and I could manage my rates. It will not happen in every case so, be professional during such kind of communication.

If client quote very less, then you may suffer to increase the price of the project at a satisfactory level. Instead of that, you tell them what you charge for a specific project. Don’t worry about whether client accepts you quote or not.

But, one thing will definitely happen that you can work with the loyal clients who agree your terms and no issues with finance.

45. Lowering Bid Below The Threshold

There are many freelance sites have bidding system to grab a project, especially Freelancer.com. You need to set your price for a particular project, and finally, the client chooses the freelancer with whom he wants to work.

To get those project, especially high-value (in money) deals people tend to lower their bids below the threshold that I never recommend.

This approach is excellent for the small projects to get an entry in the system and collect some high rated reviews. For large projects, it’s very wrong to lower bids if you can do that particular job with the desired quality.

The businesses behind those projects care about quality rather than budget, so work on that instead of stealing the deals with shorthand low-bidding techniques.

46. Charging Hourly Not Per Project

The freelancer who works privately charges per hour instead of a project. With the close mindset of earning money, it’s quite beneficial because you can extend 4-hours of work to full day and charge for that. It’s simple.

From the business point of view, it’s complete silliness where you are actually losing money by doing this. You will definitely love my explanation why to charge per project and not by hours.

Suppose, you are a specialist in website speed optimization and got a project where you need 4-hours to complete the task. You charge $25 per hour, and the client is ready to pay whatever your charges are.

Now, here is the catch.

If you charge hourly, then you will get $100 for 4-hours or need to extend the work for 8- hours to make $200 (though it’s not right approach).

But, if you charge $200 for the project you can complete the work in 4-hours which is almost half of the time than that of the first case and still, legit as the client has agreed to pay irrespective of time.

(I have assumed that you are expert and knows in-depth about that particular issue. Sometimes, a few critical problems may arise, so that decide your charges accordingly after reviewing the gig).

47. Your Rates Are Fixed Since A Long Ago

Even the plant grows with time, then why not your rates. If you have not raised your prices since the last few months, you should do it now.

Tell your clients about that especially your repeated customers because they bother about such things.

Market changes often and the costs for your business too. Providing better quality, and for investing new things, you need more money. By working more, you can raise funds to the limited level, and beyond that, you should think about increasing your rates.

Be realistic and honest about your financial terms while raising the rates. Do it after a regular interval not only for to improve the financial status but to screen the unwanted clients also.

48. Don’t Have Payment Schedule

What will you do if the client refused to pay your charges? That may happen, especially when you are working privately. Not getting paid for the hard work may lead to a bad effect on your business and your mind. (It may happen).

So, ensure a clear payment schedule before starting the project. Ask your client to pay at least 30-50% of total project cost upfront before you touch to the project.

The client can also negotiate on the same point for trust factor so that using the third-party services like PayPal is a good option for both of you because it offers seller’s protection as well as buyer’s protection policy.

You can have another payment options, and it’s completely on you.

For the long term contracts, ask your clients to pay twice in a month (5th & 25th of the month would be a better option here).

Never compromise on payment schedule and delays more than a couple of days.

49. Not Asking Extra Payment For Extra Work

How can I ask $50 for extra work on $500 job? It’s the common misconception among the most of the freelancers.

The client may also request you make small gigs as the byproduct of a large project. I think it’s a scamming and you should not be part of that.

Whenever you complete a job and get paid for that work, your work has done. Only providing support if stated in the contract is the formality for the denoted period.

Except that you should not do any work for free investing your skills & resources. If a client asks for an add-on gig, ask him to pay extra.

Keep your pricing table dynamic and work only according to that. You are not a freelancer to work for free, mind it!

50. You Are Not Clear About Your Terms & Conditions

I have kept this point at the end because it’s important and you must always remember it.

The terms & conditions are the bases of your freelance business. Anything from financial to project duration should have mentioned in clear words.

Mode of fund transfer, project delivery, revisions, included work and scope of the entire project are few terms you can place in front of your client before starting off. Otherwise, you need to end up with undesirable compromises or leaving project giving an unprofessional reason (may result in a legal matter).

It would be better to search the web for more terms & conditions or freelancing business policies depending on your specialty. I would not suggest going legal in every case but at least follow the technical terms & conditions around your job.

51. Forgetting The Mistakes That You Have Made In The Past

It’s all about you read here. No one is perfect, but forgetting the mistakes and repeating them or making avoidable mistakes is something you need to avoid.

Writing diary (a blog online) is the best practice where you can refer the mistakes that you have made in the past and easily improve them to scale your business.

I know, it’s one of the lengthy blog posts I have written but worth if you have read carefully and got something positive.

If you want to be a successful freelancer, this article will definitely help you. All mistakes mentioned here are not my own, but I have added them because you can get all of them at a single place.

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