It can be overwhelming trying to evaluate every online business opportunity that comes your way.

It seems there’s another one each day and of course, they all claim to be the latest and greatest opportunity the world has ever seen.

I have been starting and building businesses online and off for over 30 years now and have made 7 figures in both online and offline businesses.

Here’s my quick guideline that will allow you to evaluate any online business in just a few minutes.

For an online business to make any money, you need three things:

1. product(s) to sell

2. traffic to your offer funnel/landing page

3. a conversion process that converts visitors into customers

Let’e address each one separately.

PRODUCT

You really need to have a product line or group of products to sell, not just one product. Ideally, you have a low end, easy entry product under $10 and then other products of higher costs.

The reason why is you need multiple products in order to have a high enough customer value to justify the marketing expense to get traffic.

This is why selling the typical low priced affiliate offers from clickbank, commission junction, etc will not work for you unless you already have a large list you can promote your offers to for free.

The best combination is a business that has low priced products, medium priced products ($100 – $500) and also high ticket products ($1,000 and up).

Even better is if some of the products are monthly subscriptions so you have ongoing cash flow.

Who do you think will be better able to afford the marketing costs to get visitors to see your offers – someone with a one time sale product for $27 or someone with a product line ranging from $10 to $3,000?

One program I’m in has just this – with monthly subscription products at $25, $47 and $100 and 4 more one time purchase products ranging from $500 to $3,500. I’ve seen customer values as high as $800 in this program. See it here.

Who’s going to win in buying traffic – the person who can’t pay more than $15 to get a customer or someone who can spend $500 to get a customer and still make a $300 profit!

So the bottom line in the product section is to calculate what your customer value is and how much you will be able to spend to get a customer.

If the number is too low, you will not be able to buy traffic and therefore have a hard time expanding your business past your current sphere of influence.

TRAFFIC

You are going to need traffic to your offer to make any money.

If you have a large list now and a lot of followers on social media, you will be able to make some money selling anything, but I’m assuming you don’t.

Buying traffic by the click will typically cost 70 cents to one dollar per click/visitor.

The offers you might see to bring your site one million visitors for $100 are worthless – those programs don’t work and you will lose your $100!

Explaining all the different methods people use to claim to bring you cheap traffic is beyond the scope of this post – all you really need to know is that they don’t work!

So, what about free or “organic” traffic?

That’s the best traffic you can get but it takes time and expertise to get it. Learning SEO, social media marketing and other free methods is definitely a good idea but is not going to get you any immediate sales.

All in all, building your own list of people who know, like and trust you is the absolute best long term plan and you should start doing it, just don’t count on it for short term revenue.

But, that said, having the products and the traffic will do you no good at all without . . .

A CONVERSION FUNNEL THAT WORKS

If you bring people – free or paid – to a landing page that doesn’t get opt ins or to a funnel that gets opt ins but no sales, you’re dead in the water.

So, unless you are an expert in building these funnels, look for a program that has a funnel in place with proven conversion numbers.

When you buy cold traffic (from people who don’t know you) you may get 30% opt in at a landing page but only end up with 1% or less in terms of customers.

That tells you right away – if your visitors cost $1.00 each, 30% opt in and 1% of those buy, your cost per opt in is $3.00 and your cost per sale is $300.

So we’re back to what is a sale worth to you – if it’s $500 or more in this example, you’re good. If it’s $15, you’re toast . . .

Naturally, it’s important to measure the conversions at each step of a process and work to improve them over time. The analytics are critical. There are plenty of programs to set up split testing to find out what works best, but you can get a general idea just from the description here.

I’ve had landing pages getting a 3% opt in that with testing and tracking have gotten all the way up to 40%. That makes the difference between making money and losing money.

click here to see the program I’m currently promoting.

We offer a $7 trial of the system we sell so you can see how it all works and decide if it’s something you might like to do.

If you do decide to get involved, I’m here to help you with it each step of the way. You can reach me by phone at 720-890-8760 or by email at joemcvoy@gmail.com

Tags: affiliate marketing, inter, Internet marketing, online business, online business opportunity, online marketing, web marketing