Apart from information overload, and failure to action what you have learned, one of the main downfalls new internet marketers go through is trying to do it all when they start out. They read all this stuff and then go out to build the biggest and the best with all the latest sales capture methods built in. I know, I was guilty of that very thing myself when I started.

The best advice I can give you is to SIMPLIFY everything. A simple online business plan is a good online business plan. Keep everything super basic when you are starting out so your checklist when auditing your process is easy. You have to walk before you can run, and in selling on the internet you need to know that the system you are using actually works, before you think about supercharging it.

So I am suggesting to you when considering your online business plan to have a straight through sales funnel at the very first, that way it is easy to determine that all parts of the sales process is working and for the newbie you will understand the steps and what is going on. I know when I built my first sales site I was hoping I had everything in the right place and everything did what it was meant to do but I really did have my fingers crossed. You should start out with a sales funnel like this…

• So you can see that the traffic comes from search engines to the sales page where your offer is.
• They either click on the buy button or they leave.
• If they click on the buy button they go and pay. Either at PayPal or whatever you are using to collect your payments.
• They pay and then they land back at your thank you page where they can download their purchase.
• SIMPLE.

This super simple sales funnel online business plan allows you to easily look through your web stats and determine …

• how many people have come to your site
• what keyword brought them to you
• how many people took off without buying

You can also very easily troubleshoot because you are only working with a sales page, the checkout process, and the thank you page where your buyer can download the product.

Prove your system works, the product can sell, and that traffic is coming to your sales page.
If you are not getting sales and you believe you are priced competitively and that your product is in demand, then adjusting copy or page layout is easy in this simple sales funnel process. Once you are satisfied that your sales funnel is indeed working, THEN we can look at adding to your sales funnel online business plan.

Now there are many diverse and complex sales funnels, again for simplicity sake I am going to show you just a small addition to the sales funnel so again we can keep control and easily troubleshoot if we get into problems. You might progress to a sales funnel something like this …

Now when you look at this new sales funnel you can see we have added 2 more ways of selling to the SAME BUYER. Yes, we are hedging our bets on the same visitor so we increase our chances of sales. Let’s look at these additions …

• We have the same entry point where traffic comes from search engines to our sales page.
• In this new version we are creating a second chance if the visitor decides they don’t like our offer. We have added an exit page that will make a different offer but similar to our original offer. What I mean by this is, we may offer a cut-down version that is cheaper than our original offer. This way we may be addressing a pricing issue. OR, we offer a different product that is still relevant to what the visitor first came to us about. This way we are offering a choice to the visitor just in case the first product didn’t fulfill the need they were looking for. This exit strategy method gives us a second bite of the cherry.
• They say the easiest way to sell a product is to sell to someone who has already bought from you, they have already proven they will buy and that they like your products. They also say that when you have a buyer in “buying mode” or “impulse mode” CAPITALISE on it. So this is why we have added the OTO page. For the newbies, OTO stands for One Time Offer. The idea of the OTO is to intercept the buyer in between paying for your product and going to collect it. The OTO makes another offer that is usually similar to the product they have just bought, but it may do something else extra, or fulfills another need and therefore extends the capabilities. In most occasions it is an upsell, you have just sold the entry level product and now you are offering the grand deluxe version. You get the idea.
• If the buyer chooses to take up your OTO they get rerouted to PayPal (or wherever you are taking your payments) where they will then hand over more money to you. They will then get forwarded to your thank you (download) page where they can then download everything they have just paid for.
• If the buyer chooses not to take you up on the OTO, then they just proceed onto the thank you (download) page where they can collect their original purchase.

Again, we have added to our very simple straight forward sales funnel in small steps. We have increased our chances of the sale, and we are keeping control of the process this way as we are only really analyzing 2 extra steps. Whereas if we had started straight with this particular sales funnel process we would have been learning and analyzing at least 5 steps.

When you have this under control, you can very easily modify it or add further steps to it while retaining control. Your online business plan should be EXACTLY THAT, a PLAN. You will find you will be constantly modifying your online business plan, but by being methodical and taking “baby steps” you will always be in control. In fact, you will end up with the ultimate online business plan designed just for you.

I am sure you get the idea.

To your online business success,

Gary Pudney for online business advice.