Where do you start when you want to create a membership, create an online course or offer a coaching program?
Building a site online to deliver your content (your knowledge based business) involves pieces to a puzzle, these are tech stacks that will piece together and help you create your membership, create your course, create you coaching program.
Taking the step to go online and start a business is exciting. Goodness knows that the eLearning industry is booming ATM and is forecasted to hit earnings of $370 billion by 2026 (Statista 2020) So let’s get you a piece of that pie.
Knowing where to start and what to start with will help get the ball rolling… but what direction do we roll that ball?
Of course many of us may be on social media platforms already and think to start a business there. These days they certainly make that easy enough to do with groups, selling links etc. But what if you want to have your own “online property”? It certainly gives your business a professional look, builds confidence in who visits you and quite possibly trust in your services… although trust does come with time.
So where to start if you’re looking to “buy property” online?
Let’s look at the steps to take when creating your online membership, online course, or coaching program.
1. BUY A DOMAIN
Buying a domain isn’t just about hoping straight onto a domain purchase site… you need to do your homework first. Trust me, you’d be surprised who else may have a similar name to your business, or domain name idea.
RESEARCH THE NAME
- Research online who may have similar names you are looking for
- Are these sites relative to your work, or opposite? Example a friend of mine one wanted to register a domain “competent trainer”… well whilst she was training people in competency management,, competent nappies returned in search engines! Hilarious at the time, but something to certainly think about.
- Does it relates to your company, is it registered elsewhere?
BUYING THE DOMAIN
- Do you have access to DNS management? (where you can point your domain to other sites, create sub domains etc.)
- Does it include a CPANEL?
- Does it include email hosting? (not as necessary as there are many email services out there better and cheaper)
- Does it have SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificate? (A digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and enables an encrypted connection.)
- Does it cover owner privacy? (If someone looks up who owns the domain, your details are protected and not seen)
2. BUSINESS EMAIL
Setting up a professional email address, simply means once you have purchased your domain, you can register it with an email provider. Doing some research in this area means thinking about:
- What is your upload and download limit?
- Can you apply your own signature (the footer to emails)?
- Email recall.. yep some done offer this!
- Email back up and recovery
- Can you migrate other emails to your account?
- Can you add a user to help you organise your emails like a VA?
- Does it have other services included with email, like calendars
3. THE WHAT, HOW, WHERE AND WHO
Now once you have these 2 step completed, you’re set to creating your online business.
Depending on the business you are looking to start, you would break down;
What will be your offer?
How will you offer it?
Where will you offer it?
Who will you offer it to?
By answering the 4 basic questions above you can hone in on the right service provider that will house and help you create a business online.
4. WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?
The conversation of money is a “blaa” moment for me, I’m sure many of us hate it, but embrace it now because you’ll be on the path to earning millions one day, if you set yourself up and plan right now.
What can you afford to keep you going, until you have locked in members, students etc?
So think about these things;
– What will the email service cost? This is worth it, as it provides your home for communication.
– Will you use an email CRM? This is a service that helps with email sequencing, form creations to capture emails, landing pages, etc.
– Will you use a free website builder to house your Business details, and information on you offerings? If paid, read further below at TIME TO PROPERTY SEARCH
– Will you need to pay contractors to assist with marketing, VA, etc?
Obviously I’m pointing out the business running costs, and these will take away from the amount you can apply to your “online property”, and it all makes common sense, but you’d be surprised how many don’t think about the above. And of course there are likely many more to add to the list. But make sure you list them.
5. HOW WILL YOU GET PAID?
We of course need to get paid, so where to go and how to get paid?
Look up the most common online payment gateways that are available to you in your country. Check out the fees involved and go from there. Depending on who you choose, you can go with multiple options, but if you’re starting out, sometimes go with the one.
I wouldn’t recommend directing your buyers to bank transfer to you, as the security level isn’t there not only for you, but as buyers won’t feel protected if anything goes wrong.
6. TIME TO PROPERTY SEARCH
Ok so there are many online content delivery providers out there, and it can get overwhelming to find the right one.
Firstly though when you are looking to find one, be sure to stick to your requirements, because many out there will offer you addition features that you think you need, and you actually don’t. My grandfather always said “It’s better to be a master at one thing, then just good at many”. So when looking at service providers look to what they are good at.
Many will offer many additional bells and whistles, but in truth, the package you may be receiving doesn’t match the quality of service you really need.
Especially when you are starting out, you can’t afford to waste money, or time, so “measure twice and cut once”!…. OK enough with the sayings, but hopefully I’m getting the message across.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK! We all hate doing our homework, but in the long run it always helps keep you on the right path to finding that online property.
When you find somewhere to house your online knowledge based business, make sure you are protecting your content… especially if you are charging others to access it. Many a time though you will find that 1 location won’t be able to provide you everything you need to run your business so you end up having a TECH STACK, within the one location, plugging in services from all over to build the one property.
7. THE WEBSITE TECH STACK
You will need a number of “stacks” or as you can call them pieces to your puzzle to build your one site. Tech Stack is used by developers as a way of explaining the different technologies required to build the final product. In this case it’s your website, and the pieces are different businesses and subscriptions that lock in together to build your one site. .
The less tech stack, I find the better. Means less customer service centres to deal with, less duck taping and trying to fit one plug in to work with another.
So this may have very likely given you some things to think about but in summary;
- Research your domain name idea
- Register your domain
- Register a business email
- Set out your Offer
- What will be your offer?
- How will you offer it?
- Where will you offer it?
- Who will you offer it to?
- Budget
- How will you get paid?
- Get your checklist ready when searching for your “online property”
- Think about the pieces you need to maintain, function, promote your business.
If you want to learn more about how to start an online knowledge based business and start earning an income from it, then feel free to download my 43 page manual.
It never has to be hard to do. , See you next time!
The information in this article in invaluable! I’m definitely bookmarking this. I’m not quite ready to take the plunge yet but when I am, I’ll be consulting this list.