The Logistical Quickstart To Getting Your Online Business
Started From Someone Who’s Actually Done it (…Many Times)

You now have your product name, logo and domain name.

Now the question is: Which platform should you use?

WordPress? You need to know the code though, don’t you?

Squarespace? WIX? Weebly? The list goes on…

The question to ask here is – what are you going to deliver on your website? 

Is it a physical product you are needing to ship to someone? 

Or is it a course/coaching/programming delivered online?

Or do you need to create a sales funnel, where people can opt in and purchase a digital product?

Here is a shortlist of suggested options depending on what it is you are trying to achieve:

Sell A Physical Product

Shopify.com or wix.com. Shopify was purpose built for this and offers many integrations which future proof your site. This means you can start with shopify and scale all the way to $1m without needing to change software.

Content Marketing Or Blogging

Medium.com (no domain name needed), wordpress.com or squarespace.com are some options.

If writing is going to be your main thing, it is worth investing the time and effort to set up your own domain name to run your blog. Sites like Medium.com are brilliant, but you don’t really own the content that is published there. If medium.com was taken offline, there would be no way to get your content back.

Ideally, you should publish your work on multiple platforms to reduce the risk of that ever happening.

Create Online Sales Funnels + Email Lists

Need to build your email list?

Have potential customers opt in for an online zoom call you want to run?

Clickfunnels.com is the undisputed market leader in all things sales/opt in funnels. Choose from 100’s of proven templates, or create your own funnels from scratch. You do not need any prior website knowledge to use click funnels.

You can build sales pages or funnels on your wordpress website, but in our decade of experience, clickfunnels has dominated this niche and is the go to choice.

Collect Data Or Create Online Order Forms

Surveymonkey.com, typeform.com and jotform.com are the three market leaders in this space.

All of these platforms allow you to create free online forms and collect responses on those forms from your customers or soon to be customers.

It could be getting valuable feedback from your first users or setting up a form to begin billing a customer.

Forms are a great way to enable online billing in your business if you have not set up that ability on your website yet.

Collect/Manage A List Of Customers & Email Marketing Campaigns

Mailchimp is the best in class when it comes to sending emails, but what if you want to store other information about the people you are emailing?

That is where you need to set up an online CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Think of it a bit like the contact list on your phone. You can see all the messages you send that person because they exist in your phone as a contact. The same applies to a cloud based CRM – anything you collect or any communication you have with your contacts is all stored in one place. Managing and scaling this process becomes much easier if you set up a CRM.

You can use excel or spreadsheets to manage your customer. But if you do want to take an extra step, Pipedrive.com is a simple CRM and a good place to start your journey.

Mailchimp.com is the best tool for sending emails, and in most cases, you can connect your email provider to your CRM via cloud based linking software (see point 7).

Create An Online Educational Course

There are multiple online learning management platforms that you could choose to build your next online course or education university on.

Teachable.com – Built by a former college professor who was frustrated by the other platforms out there. Teachable is great for curriculum based learning/courses.

Cost – Free to get started, then $1 + 10% per transaction once you begin billing people.

Learnworlds.com – This platform was built to take school learning into an online environment with online assessments and grading.

Cost – Free trial then $24 per month plus $5 per course sale.

Kajabi – This is more membership management and sales software than an online learning platform. You can still create content that is gated behind a paywall, but kajabi has email marketing, CRM landing pages and other tools built in to communicate and sell more to your members.

Cost – $159 per month. This is something to look at medium term once you are more established.

Learndash – This is the ideal tool if you already have or are planning to use wordpress for your website. Learndash is a membership plugin to WordPress which allows you to build pretty much anything on the back of your WordPress website.

Cost – One time payment of $180 and you can use it on 10 different websites. Whilever your website remains built on WP, this really is the ultimate all in one solution.

Setup Online Workouts/Training

There are several players in this space that you will need to research before deciding what is best for your specific use case.

THE KEY THING is to have clarity on the end goal you are looking to achieve.

If it is just programming a workout each day, with that can really be handled on a website. If it is detailed individualized programming where you require members to input data and upload images for form coaching, that is a different use case altogether. Below are two examples of the most used and recommended platforms in this space.

Truecoach – Taking 1-1 training online is the problem the founders of truecoach set out to solve, and they’ve done a pretty good job.Delivery of video calls, individualized fitness plans, and nutritional support is all done via native mobile apps with a clean and easy to use interface for your members.
Cost – Free trial then from $25 per month.

Trainerize – Similar features and methods of delivery to truecoach, but the focus of this company has really turned towards fitness centres and gyms, and away from 1-1 or personal trainers wanting to do online training.
Cost- Free trial, then tiered pricing which scales based on the number of members you have.

It is really important to put some time and energy into making this decision before you begin. It is always easier if the platform you begin on is the one you scale on. However, do not let this be a barrier to beginning, as you can switch platforms relatively easily and inexpensively if you have to at a later date.