You have an online business with a problem that eludes you. A way of figuring it out may lie in the following process, which is called “unraveling the strings of success”. Imagine the strings slowly unraveling as you try out the system.

1. Figure out what you want. It may be a new website, more subscribers, fewer support tickets. In online business terms, let’s say I want “more sales.”

2. Using the goals that you have set for yourself, simply ask yourself what you can do to accomplish getting more sales. If you would ask the business owners who have online businesses, their answer most likely would consist of following up on sales more, increasing prospective customer visits, and improved online sales conversions.

3. Unravel one of the subjects you have just mentioned. For instance, if you want to increase prospective customer visits, what do you do to accomplish this? Better search engine words, more exposure for the website, and advertisements that will encourage the reader to click on your site.

4. Now take one of those topics and continue to unravel it. “If I need more links to my site, what do I need?” More links from articles, more directory links, more blog posts linking back to my site.

5. Continue the process that you have started unraveling about the subject. “What do I do to add more article links?” Recruit more writers, compose more articles, send them out to more people. The replies you give can be exact or covering a wider range. The main thing is to realize what is keeping you from having more traffic.

You can see the pattern. I generally use a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet and keep writing the links from one item to the next - making the string longer as it unravels. Eventually you will reach the point where you say I don’t need anything else except Action. And that’s where you start.

This unraveling system is easy and more often than not shows you where there is a glitch in your thought process or the strategy that you are using for your profession. For instance, the part of your profession that you do not spend enough time on will be the longer strings. The shorter ones will probably give you the quickest means to an end.

If something shows up in multiple strings, this could be an indication of a crossover in your system. It may be an unclear point for not only you, but your employees as well. It could be the way to finish one thing and lessen the length of a couple of strings.

When using this unraveling process on your business, you are able to move to the Action phase of your planning sooner. Plus you’ll have a visual map of how your business works, as well as the right things to run your online venture.