How to Become a Very Successful Online Business Consultant.

If there is one industry in this world that has grown larger than any other in human history and yet at the same time still has room for limitless potential moving forward, it’s online business. Yet despite this, most people who get involved with it will fail and certainly having a consultant who can help them avoid that pitfall is recommended and one who is competent enough to give good advice.

So in this article, I want to cover online business consultants specifically and explain how they can be very successful at piggybacking of businesses who NEED their help.

The money you can make as an online business consultant is huge. Let me share a story…

My eyes opened to the possibility of being an online business consultant many years ago when I was training at a martial arts school and the head owner asked me to have a sit down with him and someone who was pitching their own services to him.

The reason he asked me to participate in that discussion was because he knew that I was a successful online businessman who did work for himself and he wanted to make sure the person pitching his services wasn’t trying to rip him off (spoiler, he was…). Being that I was good friends with the trainer, I agreed and so we sat down to talk.

Right away, as I was hearing this person’s pitch, I immediately filtered out what was nonsense, big talk from the actual substance of the services being pitched, and frankly there was very little the person offering the services could actually do to help the business.

The price however was one of the big points that caught my attention.

At a measly $5,000 a MONTH, the services could be given out to my trainer to help him grow his school. I politely suggested that we given a little bit of time (a few days) to decide, although at the moment I suggested it, I did feel an air of distrust and frustration from the sales person, because I think he knew that his fancy sales abilities weren’t going to work.

And so I sat down with my trainer and basically starting giving him the full explanation of what I took from the sales person’s pitch, that most of what he was offering wasn’t exactly marketing services as much as it was a list of unnecessary services they (the sales guy) was slapping on in order to jack up the price, and that he didn’t need to waste so much on this stuff, when (and this is when I interjected with my own personal suggestions) I could give him a few tips to update his website, his SEO, his marketing efforts and that itself would be enough to not just do everything the sales person claimed he could do, but also get more out of it.

What did I charge my trainer? $0.

And the reason is, I didn’t want to engage in these projects because I had already been busy enough with my own.

However, to charge anything for a simple consultation would be a rip off, and all I did was suggest his website editor make a few changes here and there to their main website, a few updates and links to be placed on their YouTube videos, and before we knew it, the trainer’s website rankings picked up, traffic poured in and new clients began to flood into the school.

As a result, I had forever solidified my trainer’s trust in that what I recommended worked. And moving forward, rumors began to spread through other people inside the school as well as connections about what I did and what I could offer people, and so, I was presented with numerous offers from other potential clients throughout the years.

This is a perfect example of what a successful consultant can be, as well the income potential of what the person can make if…

-They know exactly how to help people looking to grow their online business honestly.

-They can give out advice that leads to that growth.

-That alone will give the consultant enough income potential from just 1 client to live quite comfortably and moving forward, the reputation of that consultant being able to do what he/she does will spill over to other potential clients hearing about it and wanting to hire them.

So how do you personally get started to reach that point eventually?

1) You very clearly need to understand how an online business starts, how it works and how to grow it. In order to do that, you need to understand…

2) SEO, PPC and social media and how these 3 things are critical for any website/business’s growth.

I would say SEO is the most important. The person who you are consulting for will need a website and you will have to explain to them what SEO is and that in short, it’s a form of marketing to have their website get more visitors and that this will help them grow.

In terms of PPC, this is also an important factor in growth and you will need to explain to them how to set up ads, how the model of PPC works and that you can help them pay very little and get a lot of out of it.

Now finally in regards to social media, it will be necessary to show/update the business owner on how to set up fan pages, get likes and other type of social media exposure. 

3) Ideally, you want to personally have your own example/experiment of a successful case study. Being that in my personal case, I had numerous examples from websites I’ve made and grew from nothing to making a lot of money, that helped give me the experience to help other website owners that sought that same result, to give them a starting point and strategy of what to do.

This makes the selling of your services absolutely simple. A person who knows what they’re doing gives off that confidence and at that point it doesn’t even become necessary to sell anything, the business owner will fully trust you.

4) Finally, the marketing of your services is what honestly comes last, because everything before that is what I would call your resume and proof of services. 

After you can establish at least 1 or 2 good relations with a client/s, and make them happy, then word will naturally spread about you to other people they know, that if you can make those other clients happy, they will also spread the word about you. 

You can certainly consider and even make a central website where potential leads/clients can connect with you and a lot of online consulting firms do this but before that, there needs to be a “bedrock” of happy clients and proven to work experiences/case studies to give reassurance that you know what you’re doing.

Specifics…How to implement each step above:

Fortunately I have a tutorial for every single step above.

1) For the first one, to learn how online business works, check out this tutorial. Now specifically, this deals with personal blog websites, but in all honesty, there is a “core” strategy to building an online business and that tutorial encapsulates that.

2) If you read the above article, you have the SEO understanding covered. Next would be PPC, here is the tutorial for that. Social media is a bit different and I currently do not have a tutorial set up for it, but as soon as I will, there will be a link placed right here for it.

3) There is no tutorial I can provide, but instead a program recommendation which will give you the training to create your own successful websites and let that propel you to show off to future clients. The program is called Wealthy Affiliate.

The training they provide can help you establish your own personal brand of successful websites and/or utilize the knowledge they teach to help you help personal business owners and this is why no matter how many tutorials I give to people, my end advice is to join that program, because from their teaching is where everything else becomes possible. 

4) If you can learn to create your own personal websites, use the training inside Wealthy Affiliate, then there is nothing else I can personally suggest to you in order to market your services to clients, from that point, it will become easy.

But if there is any 1 tip I can offer, it’s to seek out people with big businesses and just give them a free consultation on what they are doing to market their stuff online. If you can see holes in their existing marketing strategies, suggest a cheaper/personal option to them and say you’ll do it for a cheaper price. That usually is what will get the whole formula working in your favor. That’s how I did it with the trainer at the gym I exercise at.

My final thoughts: 

Despite there being a huge demand in online business consultants out there, my experience has shown me most of them are horrendous at what they teach and/or they have never personally done the things they teach, which honestly makes them less trustworthy. I really believe through the successful experiences I’ve had offering consultations that the 4 step approach above is quite possibly one of the best ways for you to become successful at it as well. 

Now one final thing I want to explain is that when you deal with clients, especially in a high paying industry like this, you are expected to answer tough questions and deal with the client’s behavior, which may sometimes be irrational and difficult to reason with.

This is one of the reasons why I personally don’t engage in this stuff (I only consult people once in awhile) and stick to my own projects, but if you are ready to do this and encounter that issue (inevitably it will happen), ALWAYS, discuss the issue with your client in a calm manner and explain how things will work and it will work provided that what you suggest to your client is something you’ve personally dealt with in the past and have seen get resolved (hence why the first 2 points on experience are so important, as they will basically lead to productive and peaceful talks).