Internet Home Based Business Idea

Reviewing my internet home based business idea after 9 months is rather painful. But I have not given up yet, and there is a silver lining on the horizon. And in the spirit of honest sharing, I will show you all that I did and what results that brought.

If you have read some of my other pages, you will know about Passionate Management, the site that is dedicated to empowering natural health practitioners. On it I sell a training that helps massage and other health practitioners market themselves. 

The site evolved out of my “brochure” site when I was offering coaching face to face.

Development of my Internet Home Based Business Idea

Feb 07    first announcement of the Passinate Training  

March 07 online training is live (free report offered) 

April 07 more sales oriented page

June 07 use of audio to interact with the visitors

Then there was a break while a copywriter rewrote the sales pages and the autoresponder. I also simplified the offer, and reduced what was offered and the price. Here it is now. 

Results of my Internet Home Based Business Idea

When I started out, I aimed to make 100 sales a month. Here is the reality:

There were 7,288 people who visited that site between 28 February 07 and 28 November 07.

My list of subscribers is 686, so about 10% of people signed in. I know others who have 30-40% sign-in rates. But their target market is people interested in Internet marketing, so they are probably more into using the computer.

Sales? I am hesitating to write it, but here it is: 17 sales, about $2,000.

Not great, but might not sound too bad. However, I have probably spent 1,000 hours on it. And money, did not really keep track of that. That just went as I tried out different Internet marketing tools.

Here are the things I did:

Implemented the Passionate Partner affiliate program

I set up a membership site with a forum for participants of the training (have closed that last month, as too few people used it).

Set up a directory for other useful services for health practitioners 

Had a freelancer from India research possible partner websites (have not yet contacted them properly - that is one of the things I will do in the next week).

I set up various split tests and tested aspects of the site. The strongest outcome was that the sign-up rate for the free report was twice as high with automatically starting audio then without.

Last week, I integrated the Passionate Blog. I have also researched high value keywords that promise me good ranking at the search engines.

Conclusion

It seemed like such a simple Internet home based business idea. But I turned it into this massive project. I certainly learnt a lot. And it was good to take a break from the project for a few months and now come back to it with fresh eyes and fresh ideas.

The best decision was to take on the copywriter. Even though expensive compared to past results, he provided a lot more than writing input. The motivation to work on a project in a team was well worth it.

So now I hope that this new push results in more visitors, more sign-ups, more sales and more massage and natural health practitioners with thriving practices. (Because every time I review the training I am amazed at how good it is.)