This Is How The Path To Digitization Works

The economy is increasingly shifting to the Internet. This can be seen in various examples. Amazon and other major online retailers are growing their sales daily while fewer people go to stores. Tickets for events are increasingly being sold online and can be used digitally. The e-book market is also becoming increasingly important in Europe.

Entrepreneurs now have the opportunity to follow this trend and also offer their services online. Anyone who does not yet have a direct business idea should listen carefully: in this article, we will discuss how you can make money on the Internet or bring your existing model into the digital world.

This Must Be Taken Into Account Before Starting.

To start an online business, you should first create the appropriate infrastructure. Find out from the tax office or a tax consultant which category your new project falls under. Would you like to work as a freelancer, as a trader, or even found your own company? You should at least think about all these questions at this point. If you want to sell abroad online (which will probably be the case), you should also find the sales tax status here.

Next is the segregation of accounts. You can easily use your private bank account to process payments if you are a freelancer or sole proprietor. However, a special business account is recommended if you are expecting several sources of income, are planning a larger business, or have even founded a company with several people. This bank account, which is only used for business purposes, only handles payments for the company. A separate account is mandatory in any case, especially for forming legal entities (e.g., UG, GmbH, or AG). But the overview is also important for the decision. After all, it must be clear in the tax return which incidents were business and private.

What Exactly Should Digitization Look Like?

The Internet and the digital world offer endless possibilities for entrepreneurs to start a business or transfer it to the digital world. For this reason, you should proceed according to plan when digitizing your business model.

Transfer Of A Classic Business Model To The Digital World

If you want to make an existing classic business model digital, your website is usually the first port of call. This applies not only to the transfer of classic models to the network but also in general. After all, your website is the linchpin of your digital strategy. Here you can link your social media channels, store more information about yourself and your company or open your web shop. You also manage your website. This means you don’t have to start your strategy from scratch if, for example, laws change or certain social media features are shut down. Should the law change, you can easily adapt your page and continue with the previous strategy.

As a next step, think about what you want to do or what you need exactly for the digitization of your business model.

For example, we can assume that you produce products and have previously offered them in your retail store. The first step in creating the infrastructure is your website, where you can directly create an online shop for your products. Next, look around for other trading marketplaces. These marketplaces have the advantage that they already have a large number of users. These marketplaces are, for example, eBay or Amazon. As a retailer, you can also offer your products here. With the marketplace strategy, you are not only dependent on visits to your website. In the best case, you even manage to lure users from Amazon or eBay to your site.

Offer Of Digital Products

As already described, the fact that you should use your website applies to every digitized business model. For this reason, this point should also be your first point of contact here. You also have various options if you want to offer digital products such as videos on demand, e-books, or online courses. There are also already providers and marketplaces that have a greater reach here. With its Kindle shop, Amazon offers a good platform for authors who want to offer e-books. The Skillshare platform allows new tutors to upload and offer their video courses. These platforms have the advantage of already generating sales from an existing community. For example, Skillshare is a subscription model that pays the course’s manufacturer a commission depending on the time watched. If you want to get started with digital products without previous experience, the marketplaces are the first port of call to test possible success.

Other digital products, such as software, can make them available for purchase on your website. If the cost of hosting the purchase is too great, there is also the option of integrating shops from other providers into your shop. For example, the shop provider Digistore would be the first point of contact here.

The Distribution Of Apps

Of course, apps are also digital products, but we should look at mobile applications separately. Finally, apps have some peculiarities.

Users buy their apps from specific app stores. Only those who gain access to an app store can make sales. Otherwise, it becomes almost impossible to sell apps. The most important thing when planning apps is to deal with the circumstances of the app stores and the corresponding requirements. This is how you prepare as a provider and avoid nasty surprises in the early planning phase.

The app should, of course, be properly programmed and free of errors and so-called bugs. Another point is the financing model. How do you intend to make money with the app?

It is possible to request an amount directly when downloading. Money comes in as soon as it is bought and downloaded in the store. They can also offer in-app purchases. These are additional purchases within the app (e.g., the purchase of additional functions). This is also linked to the idea of ​​offering your actual offline service via an app or using an online shop on this app. Another classic financing model for mobile applications is, of course, advertising. Here the app developer receives a commission if the user is shown an advertisement or if he even clicks on this advertisement. Sometimes these advertisements are also linked to affiliate promotions. These enable the receipt of a commission,

Draw Attention To Yourself

When you start a business in the digital world, you must be noticed. Basically, of course, this applies to every business model. After all, a business should also be found in the offline world and must therefore draw attention to itself. In the online world, this is another crucial step. After all, the Internet is where everyone competes for the attention of their target group. At first glance, this is, of course, a very attractive advertising market: thanks to developments in the area of ​​big data, target groups can be filtered directly. So if you want to start a campaign on Facebook, for example, you can choose your specific target group when planning the ad campaign. You can choose in detail what qualities people should have and where you want your ad to appear. For example, one approach is selecting what those customers have already bought. In the following, we would like to give you a few more aspects of using the Internet to draw attention to themselves.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As mentioned several times, you should urgently have created your website for your business. When customers search the web for offers like yours, the first thing they will probably do is use a search engine to display offers. For this reason, it is important for the success of your business that you are listed as high as possible in the search terms. You can do this with what is known as search engine optimization ( SEO). The content of your page must therefore be adjusted so that search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Co classify the page appropriately for the topic. Several components can affect this classification. To start, let’s look at the most important ones for now.

On the one hand, the content must be recognized as appropriate. To appear at the top when searching for a specific term, you must also provide relevant content. As a result, the search word (keyword) should appear several times in the text. But make sure that you don’t use this word too often despite everything. This circumstance is called keyword spamming and is penalized by search engines. It, therefore, makes sense to use synonyms for this search term. The search engine algorithms are now intelligent enough to create connections to the word and also understand the synonyms as a keyword modification. Images should also be present on your website. In the best case, you can also use pictures you have taken yourself. Since several websites use stock photos, they can hurt your search engine optimization in the medium term. This circumstance is then referred to as copied content.

The length of time users stay also influences their ranking in search engines. A page is in a better position if it is used longer. You get this metric corrected by giving your users what they want. For example, if your users were to search for a recipe and found it on your page, they would, in fact, most likely read it. This increases the duration of use of your site.

Social Media Marketing

Today, the use of social media is seen as the absolute must-have of an online strategy. This statement is not wrong, but you must pay attention to a few things, so the social media strategy does not flop.

First, you should find out whether your target group is also active on the platforms you want to use. So, look at the demographics of your target audience and compare yourself to the demographics of the social networks you’re interested in.

It is also important that you can regularly deliver new content. Focus on being able to post fresh content on your social media at least twice a week. If you want to use a visual medium such as images, Instagram and Pinterest are ideal. If you prefer to publish texts, you can publish them on Facebook or Twitter. It is primarily important for the algorithm of the networks that you post content frequently and regularly and that it is also actively read by users. One component of the algorithm is, for example, the number of likes (like information) or comments on a post.

If you want to use a social network directly for advertising, then it is advisable to create a company account there that is regularly updated. Here you also have the opportunity to filter out your target group better.

When using social media, it is also important to use the platforms to attract your fans to your site and thus connect your entire digital strategy. Social networks are ideally suited for launching image campaigns and doing press work. The Twitter network primarily offers the option for press work.

Conclusion

There are many ways to go digital. The most important thing is to have a plan and know your goal before starting. First, create your web presence. Your website will be the core of the digitization strategy because this is where you have the greatest design options. Against this background, it is also important that you use these design options. If it makes sense for you to set up a shop on your site, you should bring it to your site. Also, think about the financing of the business model and how you can best draw attention to yourself on the Internet.