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Overwhelm is fast becoming the modern entrepreneur’s disease.

If you are feeling overwhelmed in your digital business right now, take comfort in the fact you are not alone, and there are solutions!

As Pamela Wilson explained last week, you don’t need to bite off more than you can chew.

But what exactly is the minimum required to get your business moving in the right direction?

And how do you get started in a manageable way?

Let’s find out …

First, why you?

You have a few big questions to answer first. Everything hinges on this, because these questions alone can bring on those overwhelm feelings.

• What do you do?
• Who do you do it for?
• Why would someone choose you over someone else?

Don’t panic!

You don’t have to get this right first time, but you do have to have some idea that broadly works if you are going to make traction.

It especially works well if you can talk in terms of a beneficial outcome. Rather than say you perform acupuncture, talk about permanently removing back pain.

You know you are on the right track if people say, “Oh interesting, how does that work?” or, “How do you do that?” rather than, “That’s nice, goodbye!”

Write content that attracts

You need to identify the needs of your target audience and speak to those needs in your articles. Your content should tell stories that deliver a message your audience needs to hear.

You should solve problems and build trust. Show that you can help people with what they need.

Make a connection with your prospects so they want to hear from you more and trust you enough to want to work with you.

Gather leads

As you attract attention, you need to focus on retaining that attention. Keep people coming back and strengthen that connection you have started to build:

1. You need people to give you permission to contact them in the future.
2. You want to know that you are on the right track.
3. You want your audience to have good reason to keep paying attention to you.

Email subscribers are much more likely to become customers than any other website visitor, and the insights that interacting with these prospects will provide are equally important.

Rather than guess what your market wants from you, interact, test and experiment with your own engaged feedback group.

As you get to know your readers, and as they get to know you, you can build products and services they actually want to buy.

Your compelling offer

Creating something people actually want to buy is crucial. So many people have cool creations that they then try to get customers to buy. Identifying a need and supplying a solution that fills that need is usually far easier.

Developing a compelling offer can be as simple as getting to know your market and finding out what they most need help with. What are they very motivated to have solved? What are they reading and willing to invest in?

At this point, many people get overwhelmed or stuck in analysis paralysis. I know I did years ago. The good news, though, is you don’t have to spend months in development hell!

Online education is a fantastic way to help your market succeed, and with the Minimum Viable Product approach it can also be a rapid way to go from zero to having an offer.

Following that minimum viable product approach, you can confidently go to your market, develop solutions they are eager to buy, and incrementally grow that offering in partnership with your customers.

Even better, you can often get paid up front, which is a terrific confidence booster as well as a more financially healthy situation than running up credit cards!

If the minimum viable product approach is one that resonates with you, check out the new “Quick Start” version of our flagship course, Teaching Sells.

There’s no better way to test your market, sharpen your ideas, and zero in on creating a product that your audience wants to buy.

Teaching Sells Quick Start with Rainmaker Pro

Teaching Sells Quick Start also comes bundled with one year of Rainmaker Pro included.

Rainmaker Pro is our version of the Rainmaker Platform that is designed to make selling digital products — and setting up membership sites for online education — easy.

You’ll get the education you need to create your minimum viable product and the technology you need to build your digital commerce business.

If you’re already a Rainmaker Platform customer or an Authority member, we’d love to have you inside Teaching Sells Quick Start, and we’re giving you a special price that will make your decision easy.

And if you haven’t jumped onto Rainmaker yet, this is the perfect way to get started. You’ll have your site up and running — with a revenue-generating MVP in place — in record time.

Teaching Sells is now open …

The new “Quick Start” workshop-based course focuses on action that will help you get up and running with a product in record time.

Doors close tonight, Monday, June 22 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time, so if you want to join us, now’s the time!

Get all the Details for Teaching Sells Quick Start

Editor’s note: A version of this post was originally published on October 15, 2012. Our brand-new course, Teaching Sells Quick Start, closes to new students tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time. We’d love to see you there!

About the author

Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett is Chief Digital Officer at Copyblogger Media. He helps Copyblogger serve our customers by combining marketing strategy with technology. Connect with Chris on Twitter.

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