When aspiring entrepreneurs begin investigating the options for starting an online business, the variety of options can be overwhelming. People appear to be making money as bloggers, podcasters, vloggers, teachers, and not to mention the all-encompassing ‘influencer.’

The open question is: How do people actually get set-up and become successful online?

Then there’s the terminology.  The word website is ubiquitous, but what about landing page or squeeze page? Email, direct response, digital and targeted marketing? What’s the best approach and best tools for the type of business you want to create?

3 Key Online ‘Presence’ Tools

The most common tools, that you control, for establishing your online space are: your website, landing page and email management. 

If you want to understand more about what the online tools look like, and how you can get set-up using them go to: guide.readyentrepreneur.com to get a step-by-step introduction to getting setup on your website, landing page and email management.  And there are videos there too.

Reasons for Using a Specific Tool

You can decide which tool to use based on the depth of online presence you want to have.

You do not have to have a website to have an online presence.  You can use social media to build your online presence or start a YouTube channel.  Or just have an online store through Etsy or WooCommerce.  Establishing your content on a third party brand can act as your website, but that decision has its limitations.

Ask yourself: Do you want or need a specific place where you can send your community, or do you want to be hosted on a third party’s platform.

Important Considerations

If you do not have your own space – you are subject to the other platform’s control. You would end up being dependent on Facebook’s latest rules, or design limitations on a template store or similar constraints developed by others.

The consideration around the type of online presence you want is whether or not you want to have control. 

You also have to consider how you want to scale.  With your own space, you can scale on your own terms.

The question is: Are you a renter or an owner? You can imagine the preferred approach is to own so you can grow and have the flexibility you need.

Landing page or Website?

The terms landing page or squeeze page or lead page or lead magnet, all refer to the same thing.  Your landing page is a one page website that provides information about your business, product or service, and usually prompts the viewer to do something like enter an email address to receive a product from you.

Entrepreneurs start with a landing page as a way to collect e-mail addresses or sign-people up for a webinar or another service.  This is a great way to start if you want to build your community from the beginning, and manage e-mails from the beginning.  It may also be less expensive to have only a landing page instead of a website, and starting with one page helps you get started quickly.

A website is much more in-depth because it has multiple pages, and you can target each page differently.  On the Ready Entrepreneur sites there are pages that provide foundational information about finding your confidence, time, money, value, action and lifestyle – the 6 core factors in Ready Entrepreneur. 

There are posts for the blog.  If you plan to start a blog, you would start with a website, not a landing page.

You can have integrated pages from another site.  If you select the courses page on the Ready Entrepreneur website, it takes you to the platform where my courses live, which is Teachable.

And you can collect e-mails and other information.

In general, you have more flexibility to present more ideas with a website.  All the functionality of a landing page is with a website, but not vice versa.

Collecting E-Mail Addresses 

Whether you start with a website or a landing page, you have to decide if you are going to collect e-mail addresses. 

Why do businesses ask for your email?

The top reason is they want to own a record of interested customers for continued marketing. Over time, you want your own community – that you own – by having a list of emails of people who are interested in what you do, and why you do it.

Almost everyone looks at email every day.  Even the people who use multiple email addresses to keep the marketing separate from personal or business correspond, still definitely look – because they want to see if there are any new deals or offerings that are interesting.  And they know the businesses who have their emails are the businesses they have done business with, and might want to do it again.

An aspiring entrepreneur has to make a decision about collecting emails. Many people may believe it’s an obvious decision, but it’s not as obvious as it sounds.  Once you collect a customer’s e-mail you have to protect it, and you should decide what to do with it.

If you decide to start communicating with the people on your list, you want to be able to provide them with continuously interesting information so that they will remember you, and be engaged with your e-mails. If you decide to neglect communicating, and then suddenly start up again, you may surprise people. If they’ve forgotten you, you may receive a quick unsubscribe.

Before you start collecting e-mails, think about what your plan will be for your email list.

Will you have an opening sequence, a series of emails that are scheduled to send you messages in a defined sequence?

If so then you are probably wanting to use an email management system, like ConvertKit, which is what I use (and for which I’m an affiliate).  At ConvertKit, Mail Chimp and a few other providers, you can set up your account for free. You begin to pay as you attract more subscribers and scale.

If you are not planning to do elaborate communications, or you do not want to have any upfront costs, you can manage emails in a spreadsheet.  However, you have to be careful that your system does not get out of control as your business grows.  If you are planning to do a promotional push to get people to sign-up with you, you probably want to get a paid system, and automated, system.

There are many different email management systems that are differentiated on features and price.  What you want is ease of us and flexibility.  Think about your strategy for emails.  Are you going to have different programs with different lists that need to be managed differently?  Then you definitely want a system that can help you to do that efficiently. 

The considerations are flexibility, growth management and cost.

Summary

When you are starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur, you will know doubt look at online resources and try to decide how to use them.

For each option, tactically think through each option to avoid being lost or wasting time trying to make a decision.

• Decide what kind of online presence you want – your own controlled or hosted on another platform
• Do you want to manage your own image and style without limitation and not be subject to someone else’s rules, or do you want to keep it simple
• If you pick your own space – between a landing page or a website do you want to start big or small
• If you are going to collect emails you have to decide if you want to manually or automatically manage the process
• Manually is potentially more difficult especially as you grow.
• Automatically will grow with you, and provide flexibility to do different approaches with different groups
• Think through your reasons for using a particular tool before you get started.

Disclaimer: Links to Bluehost, Convert Kit and LeadPages are affiliate links which earn for eligible purchases.