If there is one thing that confounds coaches and holds them back from building a solid business, it’s technology. You struggle to figure out how your autoresponder connects to your website, and what page to send buyers to after they complete their purchase. You’re confused by the sheer volume of choices available for every aspect of your business. And you can’t even decide if you need a credit card processor, or if PayPal is enough.
You’re not alone. Every business owner goes through this. As a coach though, you really only need a few pieces, and they’re not that difficult to manage.
Your Website
This is your home base online. It’s where potential clients will go to learn more about you. It’s where you’ll blog, post videos, maybe host a podcast, and create your sales and landing pages.
Sound complicated? It’s not. All you really need is WordPress, and any good VA can help you get that setup and running in just a few hours.
Email Manager
The next step is to begin building your mailing list, and for that you’ll need an autoresponder service such as AWeber or MailChimp. Ideally, you’ll want to create a series of follow-up emails that are sent on a pre-determined schedule. These are a part of your product funnel, and are designed to promote your products and services to your new subscriber.
You’ll need to create an opt-in offer—perhaps a free report or cheat sheet—then place a form on your website to collect email addresses.
Again, this is not something you must learn to do yourself (unless you really want to) as any good VA can quickly create an opt-in form and put it on your site.
Shopping Cart or Payment Processor
Customers must have a way to pay you, whether for a product or private coaching. The simplest way to set this up is to simply create a PayPal button, then paste the code generated onto your sales page.
You’ll receive an email whenever someone buys, and then you can follow up with welcome packets or product delivery.
If you’re looking for a more automated system (and I highly recommend it as a massive time saver), then consider purchasing a shopping cart. These can be self hosted or a monthly service, but they all operate similarly. Your cart will take care of product delivery, add your new client to the appropriate mailing list, and even send follow up emails. You can even choose a cart that tracks affiliate sales, if you’d like to entice others to promote your products and services.
