As a beginner online there are loads of things to learn and do, and it could be overwhelming.

To avoid overwhelm therefore, approach learning online as if you’re eating an elephant: one bit at a time. Remember the Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Dictum On Eating An Elephant.

You can catch the Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Dictum right here.

To progress gingerly as a beginner in 2021, focus on only two themes as you  begin the year: Your Mailing List and Your Product.

If you focus on these two things, you’ll make more progress faster than someone who tries to do many things at the same time.

1. Your Mailing List

Your Mailing List or simply List or Contacts or Audience or Subscribers is one of your most important assets online. From your list you’ll get your first customers.

You build your INITIAL list by reaching out to all the people that you know: e.g. classmates, co-workers, colleagues, associates, ex-classmates ex-colleagues,  friends, friends of friends, acquaintances and pure strangers.

Reach them through calls, text messages, emails, one-on-one, social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter.

The most effective way to reach them as you’re starting out will be one-on-one at the malls, Church, Mosque, conferences and other events.

Without trying to be too prescriptive, just start with small talk. Ask them how life is with them, what they’re doing now, and also share what you’re doing yourself.

For pure strangers, you can break the ice by asking what they do for a living. You can also ask about their other interests and whether they are visitors or whether they live around the area you met them.

Keep the relationship and conversation going to build rapport.  In the process ask for their phone number and/or email address and start sending them relevant information based on their areas of interest.

You need between 100 and 250 names for a start. According to Joe Girard, the author of How to Sell Anything to Anybody, everyone on this planet knows at least 250 other people.

As your list becomes bigger, you will need a Contact Management System (CMS), or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System.

A CMS will make managing your list easier and will be indispensable in the analysis of the performance of your customers in areas such as mail opening, click through, and LTV (Livetime Value), to mention three.

There are many CMS out there, ranging from very sophisticated and expensive ones such as Keap (formerly Infusion Soft), Click Funnels, Ontraport, Kajabi, Drip, Vonza, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, and MailChimp, to mention a few.

Each of the CMS have their advantages and disadvantages or pros and cons, but as a beginner, I’d recommend you go for MailChimp.

Mailchimp is unpretentious, easy to use and above all, allows you a FREE PLAN of up to 2000 subscribers.

Nothing else beats Mailchimp’s free plan when you’ve not started making money.

However, having said that, you don’t even need a CMS at the beginning. All you need is Microsoft Excel Sheet to store your audience’s contact information, the key of which is their email address and phone numbers (at least as you’re starting out).

To manage your list and continue reaching out to more potential customers, you also need your smart phone, WhatsApp and other Social Media accounts, particularly Facebook.

To establish your credibility and gravitas, build strong relationships and rapport, let your contacts know what you’ve got. Brag and talk about them. That is where your Products come in. We look at your Products next.

2. Your Product

Your Product is also one of your most important assets online. Your Product and Mailing List are the two sides of the same coin: Your Online Business.

Your Product can be in the form of a book, an eBook, a Guide, an article, a Checklist, a Cheat-sheet, an App, or a Training Course.

Courses are popular Online because they are easy to sell digitally in the form of PDF, MP4s, and MP3s.

People are always looking for ways to improve their lives so Courses come in very handy.

As a beginner all you need is a good a good Product in the form of a Course. Your Course can be Basic, Intermediate or Advanced.

A Basic or an Entry-level Course is something that is low priced but solves an immediate problem for your target audience.

Nothing complicated, sophisticated or academic is needed. Just something that can solve an immediate problem.

For example, if I’m thirsty and you have water to sell I will gladly buy to quench my thirst.

If for instance I have an itch and you have a balm that can immediately reduce my discomfort, I’d gladly pay you.

So link your Product to your target audience’s immediate problem not a future problem.

Online marketing experts talk about funnels. Your Entry-Level Product will be one of the prized assets on top of your funnel.

To succeed with your Product (Course), ask your Audience what they are struggling with: their pain points.

Then ask them further, suppose I develop a product that solves your problem, would you buy?

If 3 – 10 of your Audience Members say “Yes”, and better still are willing to pay you in advance, then you’re home and dry.

It short, if someone in your target audience is will to pre-pay for your yet undeveloped Product, it means your Product idea is good.

The process of trying to find out if your target audience is willing to pay for your Product in advance is called idea validation.

Once your Product idea has been validated, go ahead and create the Product. That is all you need to do as a beginner

Let me repeat, you’re on a firm ground when your audience members are willing to prepay for your Product.

Another way of creating a Product is to go ahead and create one based on your gut feeling and start selling without involving your target audience at the beginning.

This could be a bad idea if you spend a huge amount of money to create a Product only to discover after there is no market for it.

Involving your Audience at the beginning to co-create your Product is therefore a good idea.

That said; however, do know that there is no perfect way for doing anything on and offline.

Just do what works. Do not try to reinvent the wheel.

For instance, I created my Book Writing Clinic (BWC) and Internet Business Mastery Course (iBMC)  based on gut feelings.

Both Courses have turned out successful with over one hundred and fifty students registered.

So go ahead and create your first Product, e.g. a Course you can sell for between N10K to N75K per student.

Depending on your target audience, your approach and pricing will be different but the principles remain the same.

Once you create a successful Entry-level Product, you can add more features and benefits and upgrade it into an Intermediate-Level Product and so on.

This blog post assumes you’ve attended some form of training, e.g. iBMC, which shows you the basics how online or internet business works.

If you have not, you have to because there are so many moving parts so going it alone is not only fool hardy, but penny wise but pound foolish.