Starting an Internet Business by Irfan Khairi on BFM 89.9

Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

There are 4 Steps to go through if you want to start an internet business. This is according to Malaysia’s very own Internet Marketing guru – Irfan Khairi. Following are the steps as mentioned by Irfan in an interview with BFM yesterday.

1. Have a product
2. Have a place to sell the product
3. Have a way to accept payments
4. Marketing

The above four steps may seem simple. The truth is, within the four steps above, there are still many sub steps or sub tasks that needs to be performed to ensure the success of your internet business.

Irfan dwells and explores those sub-steps even further in the podcast.

In the Have a Product step. Irfan elaborated more on the what one should do and the tools available to ensure the feasibility of the market for your product. Yes, market research is certainly the most important aspect of any business, even internet business. Yet, many people tend to forget or ignore this first step altogether.

Not doing a proper market research is probably the main cause why 95% internet businesses fail in the very first year.

The second step – Have a place to sell the product really involves having a website of your own. While a having a website may not seem necessary at first, you really should think about having in the long run. Irfan also pointed out that you really do need to have at least some website editing skills.

Through the life time of your product, you will probably need to modify a few minor details like pricing and color or some small description of the product. Outsourcing these minute modifications will certainly not be cost effective.

After have a product and a place to sell the product on the net, you must then think about how people are going to pay you. The third step of starting your business on the internet requires that you setup a payment processor for your clients. You want to be paid don’t you?

On the internet, people normally shop with a credit card. At the moment, PayPal is probably the most well known payment processor on the net. Irfan Khairi is certainly a proponent of Paypal. Deservingly so, as Paypal is certainly the easiest payment gateway to subscribe with at the moment. Paypal has recently allowed Malaysians to withdraw money from paypal into credit and debit cards. Irfan also offers a number of other payment processors which can be used like 2Checkout, WorldPay and iPay88

The last step is certainly the step which make or breaks your Internet Business. The marketing step. How do you market an internet business? Here Irfan dwells into the importance of marketing your internet website.

There are a number of ways to do marketing. Irfan informs that he is very much into email marketing. While mentioning email marketing, he stressed on the importance of complying with anti spam requirements. He pointed out the difference between a subscription based email marketing and spam emails.

Towards the end of the show, Irfan touched base on how to ensure that your internet business can be successful.

The podcast is divided into two 12 minutes sessions. If you are thinking about starting your own internet business, or have just started, I’d recommend that you listen to this insightful podcast between Irfan and BFM 89.9

Do you already run an Internet business? How would you like to drive more targeted traffic to your online business site? Yes, learn how to drive more traffic to your website. I recommend that you take a look at the New Web Traffic Secrets.