If you like giving and sharing, this is probably the way for you to have a successful online business.  It involves building trust, familiarity, and friendship (TFF).  Obviously, it takes a while to build and the turn around isn’t quick, but the cost is not in actual hard currency.  The cost is in terms of time spent.  You can however, minimize that cost if spent wisely…

Find a niche… something you like and have a good amount of knowledge in.  Have a product or service in it… an offer that you can earn money from and blog about it.  Go to WordPress.com or Blogger.com and get a free account.  If you’re technically inclined, get a relevant domain to your niche, then install WordPress.org on your server, which hosts your new domain.

Get a free account at a popular social networking site like Facebook or Twitter.  Don’t worry about not having any friends or having only a few friends.  Everybody starts at zero.  Make friends, be real, and build rapport.  Don’t promote your business off the bat.  Be genuine.  And don’t ‘friend’ just anybody.

Target people with huge followings, huge lists, or fan pages with lots of fans.  If they’re too high up on the totem pole, befriend their friends first and really make friends but do it gently.  You don’t want to come off as a pushy salesperson or a weird stalker.  After a few days, you can reach out to your target friend because he or she will be your gateway to reaching a bigger audience.  Again, be real with them and even then, don’t go promoting your business right away.  Provide value first… but only after you’ve established TFF.

After you’ve established TFF – Trust, Familiarity, Friendship, you begin to provide value.  This is where you give and share your knowledge freely.  When you get good responses and feedback, that’s when you promote your offer because by then, your audience already knows who you are, they trust you, and they consider you a friend.  And if they see value in the free stuff you share and give, once they see the value of your help, they perceive your offer to be of more value because you’re charging for it.  It’ll be easier for you to sell your offer and do all kinds of upsells and continuity to explode your business.

It’s easier said than done because for one thing, it will take up some time.  You have to be fairly consistent.  Two, if you’re the shy type, learning how to jump out of the box will lengthen the process.  And three, there’s that reputation you’ve got to build and take care of.  The internet somehow has that ability to indelibly etch a profile of you in history even if you’ve gone and left.  The conversations you have with your social networking friends will stay on the internet forever, it seems, and people will talk.  Your job is to make sure they talk well about you.  There’s always going to be haters but that’s a by-product of success.  By that time, it wouldn’t matter.  So…

Jump out of the box.  Think big, work small.

Talk soon,

Jet

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This entry was posted on October 6, 2009 at 12:23 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Blogging and Social Networking by Jet Balagtas 2 Comments