5 Secrets to Online Business Success for Stay at Home Parents

If you are taking care of the children at home, then this can be a full time endeavor. To succeed with an online business, you will need to dedicate time to it. So, the first thing that you need to do is to work out how you can find chunks of time to learn all that you need to know about online business and take action to make it happen.

You really do need the support of your family and friends here. If you have a partner, then sit down with them and tell them that you really want to start a successful online business and that you will need to work on it every day. This means that they will need to help you around the home and in the care of the children.

There are lots of success stories of parents with babies creating successful online businesses. If you need help with childcare, then investigate this as an option. Babies will sleep a lot so you should have some time during the day and the evening to devote to your computer. Nobody is saying that it will be easy.

In this article, we wrote 5 secrets to online business success often overlooked by entrepreneurs / aspiring entrepreneurs.

1. Set A Goal

Before you start your online business, you need to set some goals for it. Think about what you want to achieve in the first 6 months and then the first year and write these down as realistic goals. Be specific here and add monetary values (the income your business will generate) and specific milestones you want to achieve.

Create long term goals as well. Where do you want to be with your online business in 5 years? How many different businesses will you have? How many websites will you have making you money on autopilot every day?

2. Create a To-Do List

The cost of getting started with an online business is low. Some people start with nothing and are successful. If you wanted to open a shop in your location, then you would have to invest a lot of money. You need to rent or buy a property in the right location, purchase stock, employ people, invest in security and a lot of other things.

With an online business you can start with a domain name for $10 a year and web hosting for less than $10 a month to launch your website. Because of this a lot of people find it hard to take their online business seriously.

When things go wrong, which they will, then it is easy to think “well I only spent a few dollars on this, so it doesn’t really matter”. Many people get involved in Internet Marketing and then chop and change to different online business models because it doesn’t cost much to do this.

You need to take your online business seriously. Even if you start with nothing you need to have a strong emotional investment.

It is important that you create a plan for your online business and break this down into daily tasks. We recommend that you have a “to do” list that you actually write down on paper. There is something about writing things down that increases your commitment to them.

So for example, if you want to have your own website offering parenting tips and advice and you will promote affiliate products to make money, or even create and sell your own products, then you will need a plan for this.

So, your initial plan could be something like this:

• Choose a good domain name

• Get the best web hosting

• Create your website

• Plan the content for the website

• Look for affiliate products to offer

• Create an incentive to build an email list

• Find a good autoresponder service

• Plan the content for you email marketing

• Decide on which social platforms you will use

• Decide on a visitor traffic strategy

Don’t worry if you are unsure what some of these things mean or you don’t know how to do some of these things. That is all part of the Internet marketing learning process. You can use Google to search for the answers that you need, and YouTube is an excellent resource for finding out how to do things.

3. Know Your Why

The other thing that we strongly recommend that you do right at the beginning is to create a strong WHY statement. This is your reason or reasons for starting an online business while you are looking after your children and taking care of things at home.

You need to make your WHY statement as strong as you can and write it down. Have your WHY statement easily accessible wherever you are. Make copies of it if that helps. When you are writing your WHY statement think about the things that you want your online business to provide for you.

Some examples could be:

• To purchase a larger home for your family

• To purchase a better car

• To send your kids to college

• To have wonderful vacations with your family

These are personal things to you. Write down some ideas and then as you read each one notice how they make you feel. A WHY statement needs to stir up strong emotions within you and motivate you to persevere with your online business no matter how tired you are feeling or what other things are going on in your life.

Without a strong WHY statement you are going to find it really hard to keep your motivation levels high every day. There are many advantages to running a business from home such as being there for your family. But one of the disadvantages is that you have no boss to answer to. You need to be accountable to yourself and your family.

If you have had very little sleep because your baby kept you awake during the night, then you will need the highest possible motivation to work on your online business. Nobody said it was going to be easy but goals and a strong WHY statement will always help.

4. Focus On Marketing Your Product

A lot of people involved in online business fail to make the money that they want because they don’t focus enough on marketing. They spend too much time creating the perfect website or the perfect product and not enough on driving traffic to their offers.

It doesn’t matter how sexy or fancy your website or online store is. If you don’t get visitors to it who are interested in what you have to offer, then you won’t make any money online. Marketing is essential for your success.

You must identify your target audience. It is really important for you to know as much as possible about them.

How To Identify Your Target Audience:

• Who are your potential customers?

• What age range are they?

• Are they women or men?

• Where do they live?

• What do they like?

• Where do they hang out online?

There are many ways that you can drive traffic (visitors) to your offers. Some of these are free and will require time and effort and there are paid methods too. Social media is a great way to find your target market and persuade them to visit your site. You need to do this properly though so learn how to do this.

If you have your own website (which we would always recommend) then you should learn how to optimize your pages so that they have the best chance of ranking high in Google and the other search engines. This is free traffic and very targeted. Search engine optimization (SEO) is not as difficult as you may think. It all starts with good keyword research.

You need to find out what terms (keywords) people are using to search for what you have to offer. There are free tools such as the Google Keyword Planner that will help you to find these. You then optimize your web pages around these keywords.

Content marketing is a great way to attract visitors to your website. You create interesting content that has value and post this on social networks such as Facebook and even create videos for YouTube and other video sharing sites.

It is easy to test an offer using paid advertising. Using a pay per click network such as Google Adwords or Facebook Ads you can spend a small amount of money to see if you can convert visitors into buyers.

There are many ways that you can market your online business both free and paid. Learn about these different methods and create a marketing plan that you follow consistently. Getting the word out is very important and will literally mean the difference between success and failure.

5. Learn the Art of Delegating / Outsourcing

Does a specific task drains your energy? None of us are good at everything. You do not have to be a technical genius to succeed with an online business. If you need help, then there are plenty of places that you can go to find it. You can join forums about Internet marketing and online business and get all of your questions answered and be part of the community.

If you are not good at graphic design for example, then outsource this to a freelancer or a virtual assistant. There will be plenty of people there that can provide you with stunning graphics for your online business for a few bucks.

The same goes for writing and other Internet marketing tasks. Having a virtual team of specialists that can perform the tasks that you can’t (or don’t have the time or inclination to do) is a real advantage. Yes, it will cost you a bit of money to do this but it is worth it in the long run.

Final Thoughts

Running a business is far from easy especially if you're a one man team so we built a community where folks can network, ask questions, and learn from other entrepreneurs in all sorts of industries and company sizes. With that being said, I want to invite you to join the group as we’re sharing tips and tricks about business and we’re doing a Facebook live every week which helped and continuously helping dads create freedom for their family, themselves, and create a sustainable business to be able to enjoy freedom and create a real impact at home.