Building a sustainable, successful business online depends totally understanding one thing – your customers (and your prospects) are the most important asset you have!

This might sound obvious to you but sometimes, in the search for the latest and greatest traffic strategy or the next wonder product, it can be easy to lose focus on this.

Building a relationship with your subscribers, prospects and customers that is based on credibility, trust and confidence, will ensure your business continues to thrive and grow.

So, what are the things you can do to establish and maintain this position?

Inform!

Most people come online to do one thing – and that is to search for information, whether that’s about a product they want to buy or just a topic they want to learn more about.

Helping your customers, by giving them relevant and useful information, goes a long way to positioning yourself as a ‘worthwhile’ place to visit and some may even ‘bookmark your site’ and visit you again.

Eventually, as this relationship builds, they may well become customers of yours.

Give!

A great business is not the one based on you doing all the ‘taking’. By providing value to your customers, over and above what they would normally expect, or even experience, will ensure that you build a relationship where they will continue to buy from you, time and time again!

As an example let’s say you’re in the ‘Make Money Online’ market.

In today’s environment more and more people are looking to the Internet to build their own successful business online and secure their own financial independence- maybe even earn a six figure income online!

It’s a huge market and one of the principles of finding a  worthwhile target market is to find a ‘hungry audience’ -  so this market niche fits the bill.

But it’s also hugely competitive! The only way to succeed is to be prepared to ‘give away’ valuable information that will help your audience – and give away lots of it!!

Maybe a e-book on how to get monetise Twitter™, how to earn a living from writing articles, how to make money on Facebook™ – you get the idea.

Now I know what you might be saying – “hey, I’m running a business here!”

But ask yourself this question – who would you be most likely to buy from? The person or company that gave you masses and masses of extra value or a one-dimensional relationship where you only ever got what you paid for?

Become An Expert!

Becoming an ‘expert’ in your market space will position you as the go-to guy (or girl ).

If you do this correctly, by participating in relevant forums, posting helpful content on other people’s blogs, writing informative articles on your topic and sharing stuff on the social networks, you will position yourself as an authority in your market niche.

Sure it takes a little time and effort – but this is your business and all businesses have to be built, one step at a time.

Now you might be saying to yourself – but I’m not an ‘expert’ in anything!

Let me stop you there! It only takes 30 days to become an expert. What! – you don’t believe me. Let’s take a look at the definition of an expert:

“a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation -  and in a particular area of study”.

Don’t you think that if you’re building a business you might have done some research into your market before you started?

Don’t you think you may be able to gather valuable knowledge and share it? – it’s all over the Internet!

Don’t you think that you’ll need to educate yourself on different skills as your business grows? – just share what you learn!

Don’t you think that, just as a natural consequence of your business being a huge focus of yours, you will learn from other people in your niche about what to do and what not to do? – just share it!

There you go – simply because your whole focus is on your business and your market it’s impossible for you NOT to learn about tips and trick, effective strategies, associated topics etc, etc… then just make the information available.

Whoosh – I was on a roll there! OK, rant over…

Let me sum this up for you:

To earn a six figure income, or maybe even a seven figure income online, you must remember that your customers and prospects are your greatest asset.

Attracting them and retaining them depends on you providing real value over and above what they could possibly expect – go on, astound them!

Do this and you will create a lasting relationship based on trust, credibility and confidence.

A last tip for you – the next time you’re looking for information, or maybe even to buy something, and someone makes it a ‘special experience’ for you, think about how they did it and learn from it!